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Article: Sapo mine apatite.(Letter to the editor)
- Article from:
- The Mineralogical Record
- Article date:
- March 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 The Mineralogical, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Concerning the reported Sapo mine "carbonate-fluorapatite" first imported to Italy by Riccardo Prato some months ago, the initial analyses were made by Francesco Demartin and Italo Campostrini at the Dipartimento di Chimica Strutturale e Stereochimica Inorganica of the University of Milan. I first heard that the crystals had been identified as "carbonate-apatite" (lacking fluorine) but I was not confident of the preliminary results. Nevertheless, that name and reports of the analyses began to circulate in the mineral specimen market and, inasmuch as "carbonate-apatite" is not a valid species name, some people (probably dealers on the web) decided to call it ...