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GEOLOGY ARTICLE

Baricite found at Nonconnah Creek location
by MARVIN NUTT

11.16.06: Over the past year I have found almost 200 rocks at one location on Nonconnah Creek (in Memphis) with an unusual mineral on them. I showed several of them to some of our members at a meeting, and their first impressions of the rocks were that they had pollution on them. I was not convinced and continued to collect them. I brought three of the better specimens that I had found most recently to the March, 2006 meeting.

I showed them to Idajean, and she thought that they were interesting. So, she showed them to Bill Pryor, an Arkansas state geologist and the speaker for the night at the end of the meeting. He spent a little time analyzing them with his magnifying glass and said that they were probable crystals known as vivianite. He asked for permission to take them back to his lab in Arkansas and examine them with other geologists with works. After a couple of weeks he sent them back to me with a short note confirming them to be vivianite. I had never heard of vivianite, but his confirmation started a fire under me. I got on the internet and looked up vivianite. I called and corresponded with Tennessee state geologists, and one of them indicated that there were only two previous occurrences of vivianite in Tennessee. One location didn't exist anymore, and the other location had not been recorded.

I then went to The University of Memphis and met with Dr. George Swihart of the geology department. He is the professor in the department that is most interested in minerals, and he was interested in the crystals I showed him. He asked if he could have them to study, and I agreed. In a short time, he called me in and asked me if I would
mind his breaking a couple of the crystals up into powder in order to test them by X-Ray diffraction in the physics department. I agreed and even watched as he chose and prepared the crystals for the test. The next time he asked me to meet with him, he showed me the results of the test. He determined that the minerals were in the vivianite family of minerals, but were more like baricite than vivianite. He said that he needs to do further examination to determine if they are indeed baricite, or perhaps, a new mineral altogether.

He sent me to the chemistry library, and the earthquake center, where the geology library is located to do some guided research. I have done so, and shared my finding with him. At present baricite has been found in these locations: The Yukon in Canada, New Zealand, and Russia. If what I found is baricite, that will be exciting, because it will be the first occurrence reported in the United States. If it is a new mineral, that will be even more exciting, because I will have the honor of giving it a name. I have decided upon a name, but that must wait.

It may be a short time before I find out for sure what I have discovered. If you are interested I will let you know when I get a definitive answer from Dr Swihart.

No matter what it ends up being, I owe a great deal to the encouragement I have gotten from Mike and Sherri Baldwin, Idajean Jordan, and many others in the Memphis Archaeological and Geological Society.

This is a page showing the data I obtained from the research study that I did with the information that he had obtained on one of my samples at the University of Memphis Physics Dept. I shared it withhim today (November 15) and he was very pleased with it. As I mentioned above, he is going to test one more sample, to see if it will be any different from the first. If it is determined to be baricite then he will advise me as to how to write a report making a
claim for the first discovery of baricite in the U.S.A..

X-ray powder data for baricite and three confirmed vivianite samples from the article "X-ray diffraction studies of vivianite, metavivianite, and baricite" by T. Sameshima, et.al. in  Mineralogical Magazine, March 1985, Vol. 49 p.82  compared to a recently discovered crystal found at Nonconnah Creek in Memphis, Tn. Tentatively identified as Baricite

Vivianite 1. Earthy, cryptocrystalline vivianite, Waiotu, New Zealand. Au:2473
Vivianite 2. Auricular crystalline vivianite nodule, Holocene Swamp,
Auckland, N.Z. Au:2469
Vivianite 4. Crystalline vivianite, Leadville, Colorado, U.S.A. BM (NH):1907,115

Note. The colors above have the following significance: Red shows when the suspected baricite resembles the known barciite more that vivianite;  Blue shows when the suspected baricite resembles vivianite more that the known baricite; Green shows when no marked resemblence exists to either one over the other; brown is used when no figures are given for both the known baricite and the vivianite samples to which the suspected baricite can be compared.

This article was written by MAGS member, Marvin Nutt, November 16, 2006. Photo of one of Marvin's specimens taken by Mike Baldwin.