SITE LINKS

Site Links page

Home Page

West Central
Scotland

East Central
Scotland

Alva Silver &
Scottish Gold

Leadhills & Wanlockhead

Southern Uplands

Scottish Highlands

Isle of Skye

Strontian

Mineral species are described within certain guidelines, based on scientific analysis of samples obtained from a specific location. The location for this description then becomes the species' type locality. The material is then stored for future reference.

Type locality is an important factor in mineralogy but not an imperious one. Some mineral species' type localities are unknown or imprecise. Generally, the type locality is the site where the new mineral was first found. The type locality of a mineral however may not be the site for the best examples.

Nowadays, new mineral species tend to occur as "invisible, super-microscopic blobs which can only be detected by the latest NASA hardware". Or so it seems! Currently, the Mineral Kingdom has around 4,200 bona fide members.

One part of the fascination of minerals can be their names and how they received them. These may often be attractive, strange and/or exotic sounding - particularly so with the well-established minerals.

A mineral species is named for a whole variety of reasons.

Some of the more relevant factors involved are those of location (where it was first found), its chemistry, its physical properties, the finder, the analyser/ describer of the new material or someone particularly deserving of being so honoured.

The origin of some names are fairly obvious, while others can be rather obscure.

BREWSTERITE - Strontian, Argyll, Scotland.
Gemmy clove brown-honey crystals to 3mms.
from the type locality.

GREENOCKITE - Erskine, Renfrew, Scotland.
A 5mm crystal with some attached matrix.

Type Locality & the UK -
& Unusual Case Histories

The type locality is generally the first place a new mineral species is found. The United Kingdom has around 100 type localities and their discoveries date from over two centuries ago to the present day.

Some new minerals have been found simultaneously in different locations, bringing about co-type localities.
There are also examples when a mineral is first found in one place, but another becomes its type locality.

While analysing and describing the material from the first site, the same material has been found, analysed and described as a new species elsewhere. This has also occured within the UK...

HEULANDITE - Old Kilpatrick, Dumbarton, Scotland.

A 20mm composite crystal on a matrix of Carboniferous basalt from the type locality. The mineral is named for the famed 19th century,
British mineral dealer, Henry Heuland.

CALEDONITE
a hydrous lead-copper carbonate with sulphate

Caledonite was first found over 170 years ago in northern England. Shortly afterwards, it was also found at Leadhills-Wanlockhead.

Since studies of the Scottish material brought about a published description sooner than the northern England material, the type locality for caledonite became Wanlockhead-Leadhills.

As the latter site was the first description for the species, it had name priority and the mineral was named after the Latin title for Scotland, Caledonia.

LINARITE
a hydrous lead - copper sulphate

An irregular situation occurred in the1820s concerning the UK and the mineral, linarite.

The species had been found both in Cornwall and Leadhills and fine crystal drawings of the species from both localities had been published. However, the mineral was scantily described and named.

As a result, the type locality material, from Linares in southern Spain, was fully described some years later - a locality where it is both a rather insignificant and a very rare species.

MATTHEDDLEITE
a lead silicate with sulphate & chlorine

A Case of Déjà Vu

By a strange coincidence, the Leadhills-Wanlockhead area and the Caldbeck Fells of northern England repeated the same scenario more recently, when the species, mattheddleite, was first found in the Caldbeck Fells of Cumbria in 1986.

It was found shortly afterwards at Leadhills and described as a new species from this locality in 1987 and was subsequently named for the Professor of Chemistry at St. Andrews University, Matthew Forster Heddle, pioneer of Scottish topographical mineralogy who lived during the 19th Century.

The list below details all the minerals which have their type locality in Scotland.

It contains well-known, common and obscure members of the Mineral Kingdom.