Kainosite is a
silicate mineral
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, silica (silicon dioxide, ) is usually consid ...
that has the formula of Ca
2(Y,Ce) SiO
4O
12(CO
3)•(H
2O). Kainosite was first discovered in
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...
on the island of
Hitterø[.Accessed 17 September 2010. ] and was named by
Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld
Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (18 November 183212 August 1901) was a Finland-Swedish aristocrat, geologist, mineralogist and Arctic explorer. He was a member of the Fenno-Swedish Nordenskiöld family of scientists and held the title of a friher ...
(1832–1901) in allusion to the Greek word for "unusual" for its rarity and exotic composition.
Kainosite, is part of the
orthorhombic crystal class minerals, which is a system that results from stretching a cubic lattice along two of its orthogonal pairs. Kainosite is a biaxial mineral, so the light entering its crystals will be polarized in two vibration directions (XYZ) for it has two optic axes. Because Kainosite is orthorhombic, the vibration directions XYZ coincide with the a,b,c crystallography axes.
Kainosite is very rare and mostly found in Russia in
vug
A vug, vugh, or vugg (
) is a small- to medium-sized cavity inside rock. It may be formed through a variety of processes. Most commonly, cracks and fissures opened by tectonic activity (folding and faulting) are partially filled by quartz, ...
s,
pegmatites,
granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...
s, and alkalic complex as an altered product of the mineral
kuliokite. Classic samples have been discovered in
Madawaska Mine,
Bicroft Mine, and
Greyhawk Mine, near
Bancroft, Ontario
Bancroft () is a town located on the York River in Hastings County in the Canadian province of Ontario. It was first settled in the 1850s by United Empire Loyalists and Irish immigrants. From the mid-1950s to about 1982, mining was the primary ...
.
References
{{Reflist
*Rumanova I.M,and Volodina G.F,and Belov N.V (1967) "The crystal structure of the rare earth ring silicate kainosite, Ca
2(Y,Tr)
2 i4O12O
3 2O. ''Soviet Physics Crystallography'', 11, 485–491.
Cyclosilicates
Carbonate minerals
Lanthanide minerals
Yttrium minerals
Orthorhombic minerals
Minerals in space group 62