Description

Detailed Description

This is very cool zircon crystal at the top of this specimen – it is so strongly colour-zoned that it is bicoloured. For the full length of the prism, it is deep red, and at the top pyramidal termination, it is very lightly coloured, almost colourless. There is other zircon on this specimen that is not well developed into sharp crystals. The featured crystal is 1.3 cm tall. In excellent condition, no damage. Fluoresces yellow under short-wave ultraviolet light, as shown in the last photo. A unique zircon.

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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.