Dypingite

A platelike specimen with its upper and lower surfaces thickly crowded with submillimeter spheroids of white dypingite.  Many of the spheroids are linked to form curved "trackways," a familiar habit of the mineral as described by Dunn (1995).  The dypingite fluoresces bright pale blue LW, less brightly and bluish-white rather than blue MW, and weak bluish-white SW.  The matrix rock is altered, nonfluorescent, franklinite-rich ore locally colored orange by secondary hydrothermal zincite.  The former owner of this specimen, Richard C. Bostwick, collected it in 1975 or 1976 while working as a miner in the North Orebody at Sterling Hill and later (August 2024) donated it to the Franklin Mineral Museum. Its identity has been confirmed by Raman spectroscopy and its new catalog number is FMM-3283.

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