Temagamite is a bright white

palladium Palladium is a chemical element with the symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. He named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself na ...

mercury Mercury commonly refers to: * Mercury (planet), the nearest planet to the Sun * Mercury (element), a metallic chemical element with the symbol Hg * Mercury (mythology), a Roman god Mercury or The Mercury may also refer to: Companies * Merc ...

telluride mineral A telluride mineral is a mineral that has the telluride anion as a main component. Tellurides are similar to sulfides and are grouped with them in both the Dana and Strunz mineral classification systems.http://webmineral.com/strunz/II.shtml Webm ...

with a hardness of on the

Mohs scale The Mohs scale of mineral hardness () is a qualitative ordinal scale, from 1 to 10, characterizing scratch resistance of various minerals through the ability of harder material to scratch softer material. The scale was introduced in 1812 by th ...

. Its chemical formula is Pd₃ Hg Te₃. It was discovered at the Temagami Mine on

Temagami Island Temagami Island, formerly spelt as Timagami Island, is an island in Lake Temagami in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is the largest island within the lake, with Bear Island coming second. The island has many hiking trails that lead into the old-gr ...

Lake Temagami Lake Temagami, formerly spelled as Lake Timagami, is a lake in Nipissing District in northeastern Ontario, Canada, situated approximately 80 km north of North Bay. The lake's name comes from ''dimii-agamiing'' "tih-MEE-uh-guh-MEENG", which me ...

in 1973, and it represents a rare mineral in the

Temagami Greenstone Belt The Temagami Greenstone Belt (TGB) is a small 2.7 billion year old greenstone belt in the Temagami region of Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It represents a feature of the Superior craton, an ancient and stable part of the Earth's lithosphere ...

. It occurs as microscopic inclusions within massive

chalcopyrite Chalcopyrite ( ) is a copper iron sulfide mineral and the most abundant copper ore mineral. It has the chemical formula CuFeS2 and crystallizes in the tetragonal system. It has a brassy to golden yellow color and a hardness of 3.5 to 4 on the Mo ...

at Temagami in association with other rare tellurides:

merenskyite Merenskyite is a rare telluride / bismuthinide mineral with the chemical formula . It is an opaque white to light gray metallic mineral that occurs as inclusions within other minerals such as chalcopyrite. It crystallizes in the trigonal crystal ...

stützite Stützite or stuetzite is a silver telluride mineral with formula: Ag5−xTe3 (with x = 0.24 to 0.36) or Ag7Te4. It was first described in 1951 from a museum specimen from Sacarimb, Romania. It was named for Austrian mineralogist Xavier Stütz ...

hessite Hessite is a mineral form of disilver telluride (Ag2Te). It is a soft, dark grey telluride mineral which forms monoclinic crystals. It is named after Germain Henri Hess (1802–1850). Hessite is found in the US in Eagle County, Colorado and in ...

and an unnamed Pd-Hg-Ag telluride.http://rruff.geo.arizona.edu/doclib/cm/vol12/CM12_193.pdf Canadian Mineralogist, Vol. ll pp. 193-198 (1973) In addition to the discovery locality, it has been reported from the

Stillwater igneous complex The Stillwater igneous complex is a large layered mafic intrusion (LMI) located in southern Montana in Stillwater, Sweet Grass and Park Counties. The complex is exposed across 30 miles (48 km) of the north flank of the Beartooth Mount ...

in Montana and the New Rambler

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

–

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to ...

mine in the

Medicine Bow Mountains The Medicine Bow Mountains are a mountain range in the Rocky Mountains that extend from northern Colorado into southern Wyoming. The northern extent of this range is the sub-range the Snowy Range. From the northern end of Colorado's Never Summer ...

Wyoming Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...

References

Telluride minerals Palladium minerals Mercury minerals Geology of Temagami Orthorhombic minerals Minerals described in 1973 {{mineral-stub

See also

References