3.4" Natural, Native Copper with Quartz - Morocco

This is a 3.4" long, natural formation on native copper mined from the Oumjrane Mines in Morocco. The exterior copper has oxidized, resulting in a green mineral deposit that's chemically very similar to malachite. This specimen also features small quartz crystal formations scattered throughout the copper.

Native copper is an uncombined form of copper that occurs as a natural mineral. Copper is one of the few metallic elements to occur in native form, although it most commonly occurs in oxidized states and mixed with other elements. Native copper was an important ore of copper in historic times and was used by pre-historic peoples.

Native copper occurs rarely as isometric cubic and octahedral crystals, but more typically as irregular masses and fracture fillings. It has a reddish, orangish, and/or brownish color on fresh surfaces, but typically is weathered and coated with a green tarnish of copper carbonate.

Quartz is the name given to silicon dioxide (SiO2) and is the second most abundant mineral in the Earth's crust. Quartz crystals generally grow in silica-rich environments--usually igneous rocks or hydrothermal environments like geothermal waters--at temperatures between 100°C and 450°C, and usually under very high pressure. In either case, crystals will precipitate as temperatures cool, just as ice gradually forms when water freezes. Quartz veins are formed when open fissures are filled with hot water during the closing stages of mountain formation: these veins can be hundreds of millions of years old.
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DETAILS
SPECIES
Copper & Quartz
LOCATION
Oumjrane Mines, Morocco
SIZE
3.4 x 2.5"
CATEGORY
ITEM
#117687