As of: February 3, 2024, 5:09 a.m
By: Armin T. Linder
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A sensational discovery in Bavaria amazes experts - and its history is also spectacular, after all, the whole thing has been lying dormant in a Bavarian cellar for decades.
Hof - A spectacular discovery from Bavaria is making big waves: Hazelnut-sized chunks of the extremely rare mineral Humboldtin lay dormant for decades in a rock collection in Hof.
Without anyone knowing about it.
In January, the Geological Service at the State Office for the Environment (LfU) went public with this, and head Roland Eichhorn also spoke
about it in the January 27th issue of
Spiegel .
Roland Eichhorn, head of the geological service at the State Office for the Environment (LfU), raves about the find.
© Daniel Vogl/dpa
So far, tiny crystals have only been found in a few places worldwide, explained Eichhorn.
Together these would roughly form a snowball that would fit in one hand.
“And we have now found a second snowball.” He suspects, “we have doubled the number of Humboldtin in the whole world.”
“The cyborg among minerals”: Amazement at the Humboldtin discovery in Bavaria
The Humboldtin is named after the natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt.
“It is the cyborg of minerals,” says Eichhorn, who also calls it “a freak of nature.”
It consists of carbon and water like all life on earth - but at the same time it also contains iron.
His statements to Spiegel
also show how unusual Humboldtin appears
.
“Imagine making mashed potatoes, forgetting about it while watching TV, and finding it stale on the plate the next morning.
This is what it looks like.
They are round spheres with a peculiar pale yellow color.”
During digitization work, the employees came across a 75-year-old letter in February 2023 that reported on the mineral.
However, it was not listed in the catalog.
So the team set out to search the collection of 130,000 exhibits.
It finally discovered the yellow chunks with a label in a small box in a drawer in the basement of the rock collection.
The hazelnut-sized chunk of the extremely rare mineral Humboldtin next to the handwritten note.
© picture alliance/dpa/LfU |
Kemner
Analyzes in the laboratory have now shown that it is actually Humboldtin.
According to Eichhorn, this comes from a lignite mining area near Schwandorf in the Upper Palatinate - and will probably continue to puzzle researchers.
Brown coal mining was abandoned and the area was filled with water in the 1980s.
“There is no longer any way to examine the site to get clues as to how the Humboldtin came about,” said Eichhorn.
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This is what Humboldtin looks like: The yellow mineral was found in 1949 at a depth of 2.5 meters in the middle of a brown coal seam in the Mathiaszeche.
© Kemner, LfU
Humboldtin can be admired at the mineral fair in October
And now?
Is there anything you can do with Humboldtin?
Not really.
“Because it’s so incredibly rare,” says Eichhorn, “of course you can’t use it for anything, there’s no industry for that.
Humboldtin is not a gemstone either; you cannot cut it.
It is not a gold-like product, so it is not necessarily valuable.
Only crazy collectors in a positive sense would perhaps spend money on it.” But it can be exhibited: mineral fans will have the opportunity to admire it: it will be on display at the Geological Survey’s stand at the largest European minerals trade fair in October 2024.
There was also a spectacular discovery in the animal world.
(lin with dpa)
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