Billwiseite is a very rare oxide mineral found at the pegmatite commonly referred to as "Stak Nala" located within a few hundred yards from the village of Toghla in the Stak Nala, Gilgit-Baltistan Pakistan. It has only been found as a coating on a single crystal of

lepidolite Lepidolite is a lilac-gray or rose-colored member of the mica group of minerals with chemical formula . It is the most abundant lithium-bearing mineral and is a secondary source of this metal. It is the major source of the alkali metal rubidi ...

. The sole rock containing Billwiseite is kept at the Royal Ontario Museum, catalogue number M5595. It contains four relatively uncommon elements:

antimony Antimony is a chemical element with the symbol Sb (from la, stibium) and atomic number 51. A lustrous gray metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite (Sb2S3). Antimony compounds have been known since ancient t ...

, niobium,

tantalum Tantalum is a chemical element with the symbol Ta and atomic number 73. Previously known as ''tantalium'', it is named after Tantalus, a villain in Greek mythology. Tantalum is a very hard, ductile, lustrous, blue-gray transition metal that ...

, and

tungsten Tungsten, or wolfram, is a chemical element with the symbol W and atomic number 74. Tungsten is a rare metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively as compounds with other elements. It was identified as a new element in 1781 and first isol ...

. It is named after William Wise, a mineralogist from the

University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California with 23,196 undergraduates and 2,983 graduate students enrolled in 2021–2022. It is part of the U ...

. It was discovered by an international group of geologists, and accepted by the IMA in 2010. Its discovery was announced in ''Mineralogical Magazine'' in 2011, and was described in detail in 2012 in ''The Canadian Mineralogist'' by Hawthrone et al.

References

{{reflist Oxide minerals Antimony minerals Niobium minerals Tantalum minerals Tungsten minerals Monoclinic minerals Minerals in space group 15 Minerals described in 2012