Red Beryl with Pseudobrookite, Frank Stallings Searle Canyon Mine, Thomas Range, Juab County, Utah, USA RARE!
A beautiful red beryl presenting a textbook hexagonal habit. Red beryl is extremely rare, with only three known localities in the US. The crystal is complete all around, with sharp edgework and lustrous faces. As a bonus, the specimen presents micro-inclusions of the rare iron-titanium oxide pseudobrookite. Several images have been backlit to highlight the internal structure. This piece, along with a vanishingly few others, was extracted from a pocket on October 4th, 2024. The specimen, part of the Verity Collection, comes with a certificate of authenticity from the original collector, Frank Stallings.
Dimensions: 6 x 5 x 4 mm.
About red beryl: Gem-quality red beryl is estimated to be worth 1,000 times more than gold and is so rare that one red beryl crystal is found for every 150,000 diamonds. Red beryl formation began in the Thomas Range of Utah with the eruption of a topaz rhyolite lava from volcanic vents. As the lava began to cool, shrinkage cracks formed, creating pathways for high-temperature gases rich in beryllium to escape. Oxidized surface water also began seeping into these cracks and mixed with the rising beryllium gases. The gases reacted with the surface water, silica, alkali feldspar, and iron manganese oxides from the lava to form red beryl crystals. Red beryl probably grew at temperatures between 300 to 650 degrees Celsius. The crystals in the Thomas Range are associated with topaz, bixbyite, garnet, pseudobrookite, or hematite.
Reference: Utah Geological Survey, Survey Notes, v. 34 no. 3, September 2002, Author: Carl Ege
