Tugtupite 1
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Tugtupite is a
beryllium Beryllium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a steel-gray, hard, strong, lightweight and brittle alkaline earth metal. It is a divalent element that occurs naturally only in combination with ...
aluminium Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...
tectosilicate Silicate minerals are rock-forming minerals made up of silicate groups. They are the largest and most important class of minerals and make up approximately 90 percent of Earth's crust. In mineralogy, the crystalline forms of silica (silicon dio ...
. It also contains
sodium Sodium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Na (from Neo-Latin ) and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 element, group 1 of the peri ...
and
chlorine Chlorine is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between ...
and has the formula Na4 Al Be Si4 O12 Cl. Tugtupite is a member of the silica-deficient
feldspathoid The feldspathoids are a group of tectosilicate minerals which resemble feldspar Feldspar ( ; sometimes spelled felspar) is a group of rock-forming aluminium tectosilicate minerals, also containing other cations such as sodium, calcium, pota ...
mineral group. It occurs in high alkali intrusive
igneous rocks Igneous rock ( ), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main Rock (geology)#Classification, rock types, the others being sedimentary rock, sedimentary and metamorphic rock, metamorphic. Igneous rocks are formed through the cooling and solidifi ...
. Tugtupite is tenebrescent, sharing much of its crystal structure with
sodalite Sodalite ( ) is a tectosilicate mineral with the formula , with royal blue varieties widely used as an ornamental gemstone. Although massive sodalite samples are opaque, crystals are usually transparent to translucent. Sodalite is a member of th ...
, and the two minerals are occasionally found together in the same sample. Tugtupite occurs as vitreous, transparent to translucent masses of
tetragonal In crystallography, the tetragonal crystal system is one of the 7 crystal systems. Tetragonal crystal lattices result from stretching a cubic lattice along one of its lattice vectors, so that the Cube (geometry), cube becomes a rectangular Pri ...
crystals and is commonly found in white, pink, to crimson, and even blue and green. It has a
Mohs hardness The Mohs scale ( ) of mineral hardness is a qualitative ordinal scale, from 1 to 10, characterizing scratch resistance of mineral In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid substance with a fair ...
of 4 and a
specific gravity Relative density, also called specific gravity, is a dimensionless quantity defined as the ratio of the density (mass of a unit volume) of a substance to the density of a given reference material. Specific gravity for solids and liquids is nea ...
of 2.36. It fluoresces crimson under
ultraviolet Ultraviolet radiation, also known as simply UV, is electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths of 10–400 nanometers, shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight and constitutes about 10% of ...
radiation. It was first found in 1962 at Tugtup agtakôrfia
Ilimaussaq intrusive complex The Ilimaussaq intrusive complex is a large alkalic layered intrusion located on the southwest coast of Greenland. It is Mesoproterozoic in age, about 1.16 Ga. It is the type locality of agpaitic nepheline syenite and hosts a variety of unusua ...
of southwest
Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...
. It has also been found at
Mont-Saint-Hilaire Mont-Saint-Hilaire () is a suburb of Montreal on the South Shore of southeastern Quebec, Canada, on the Richelieu River in the Regional County Municipality of La Vallée-du-Richelieu. The population as of the Canada 2021 Census was 18,859. T ...
in
Quebec Quebec is Canada's List of Canadian provinces and territories by area, largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, ...
and in the
Lovozero Massif The Lovozero Massif (, ''Lovozyorskiye Tundry'', named after the lake in that area – Lake Lovozero; the region is also known as , ''Lovozyorye'') is a mountain range located in the center of the Kola Peninsula in Russia, between Lovozero and ...
of the
Kola Peninsula The Kola Peninsula (; ) is a peninsula in the extreme northwest of Russia, and one of the largest peninsulas of Europe. Constituting the bulk of the territory of Murmansk Oblast, it lies almost completely inside the Arctic Circle and is border ...
in
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
The name is derived from the Greenlandic
Inuit Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwe ...
word for
reindeer The reindeer or caribou (''Rangifer tarandus'') is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to Arctic, subarctic, tundra, taiga, boreal, and mountainous regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. It is the only re ...
(''tuttu''), and means "reindeer blood". The U.S. Geological Survey reports that in Nepal, tugtupite (as well as jasper and nephrite) were found extensively in most of the rivers from the Bardia to the Dang. It is used as a gemstone.Gemstones: Properties, Identification and Use By Arthur Thomas


References

Sodium minerals Beryllium minerals Aluminium minerals Feldspathoid Sodalite group Natural history of Greenland Tetragonal minerals Minerals in space group 82 Gemstones Minerals described in 1962 {{silicate-mineral-stub