Description

Detailed Description

This specimen host four red zircon crystals up to 1 cm in a light-toned calcite – the contrast is super. The smaller zircons are sharp, and the largest one has mostly very sharp faces also, with one termination face (back right, from the viewpoint of the first photo) and a couple of corners/tips having interacted with the other minerals as it was crystallizing, so these areas are a bit less sharp. In excellent condition, no damage except a back edge of the large crystal, at the matrix, is chipped. The zircon crystals fluoresce yellow under short-wave light, as shown in the last photo. This piece really stands out, with the red on cream-coloured matrix.

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About these Zircon Specimens

These zircons are from a relatively large new find of zircons from Astor Valley, in Pakistan. A locality that has sporadically produced moderate amounts of material in recent years, this recent find produced a large number of pieces. However, fine zircons are proportionally very few. There are two key reasons for this. First, the zircons are enclosed within solid rock with other hard constituent minerals, such that a good number of zircons were broken when they were collected. However, the second reason is the much more prevalent issue based on the material I’ve seen: the zircon crystals seem to have formed more or less contemporaneously with most of the other minerals in the deposit – feldspar, biotite mica, and pyroxene – and as a result, most of the zircon crystals are not fully developed. Instead, most zircon crystal growth was interrupted by the growth of these other minerals, and therefore most zircons are simply incomplete, or malformed. And yet, among well over 1000 pieces I went through from this find, there were a few excellent specimens.