











Mineralpedia Details for Gatehouseite
Gatehouseite
Named for Dr. Bryan Michael Kenneth Cummings Gatehouse who was a crystal chemist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. Gatehouseite is a rare mineral which has its type and only locality at the Iron Monarch open cut in South Australia. There, it occurs “as a secondary mineral in cavities in a sedimentary Fe-Mn deposit, probably formed by reaction of phosphate-rich fluids with hausmannite at low temperature.
Ref. Handbook of Mineralogy, Anthony et al (1995) and MSA at http://www.handbookofmineralogy.org/pdfs/gatehouseite.pdf
- Formula
- Mn2+5(PO4)2(OH)4
- Crystal System
- Orthorhombic
- Cleavage
- Good, None, None
- Luster
- Adamantine
- Color
- yellow, yellow, pale orange
- Streak
- light yellow
- Class
- Orthorhombic - Disphenoidal
- Hardness
- 4
- WebMineral
- View Gatehouseite
- Mindat
- View Gatehouseite
Gatehouseite from Iron Monarch mine, Iron Knob, South Australia, Australia
- Special Info
- Type Locality
At least four good rosettes of Gatehouseite, an extremely rare anhydrous manganese phosphate. Discovered in 1993 and has yet to be discovered elsewhere. Gatehouseite probably forms in the presence of phosphate rich solutions acting upon manganese or iron rich sedimentary fluids under low temperatures. On this specimen there are also tiny, rice shaped crystals of Rhodochrosite. Gatehouseite was first described in Mineralogical Magazine, June /993, Vol. 57. It is named in honor of Bryan Gatehouse, an expert crystal chemist on oxide and oxysalts at Melbourne.
Orange brown micro crystals of Gatehouseite