Search Mineralpedia – A Mineral Photo Database and Identification Guide

John William Dawson is the namesake of Dawsonite as a former Canadian geologist and Principal of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Dawsonite is an uncommon mineral that occurs in localities in Canada, the United States, Italy, Switzerland, Albania, Hungary, Russia, Tanzania, Algeria, Australia, and a few others. In its Canadian locality is occurs as a coating on vug walls and fractures in hydrothermally altered feldspathic dikes and hornfels, in its US locality in the Green River formation as an authigenic mineral in alkaline shales and coal bearing rocks, and at its Tanzanian locality in saline soil in nepheline syenite tuff.

Ref. Handbook of Mineralogy, Anthony et al (1995) and MSA at http://www.handbookofmineralogy.org/pdfs/dawsonite.pdf

Named for Robert James Champion de Crespigny, the Chairman of Normandy Mining Limited and the Chairman of the South Australian Museum, for his large contributions to furthering Australian education. Decrespignyite is a rare mineral that can be found only in the Paratoo copper mine in South Australia, Australia. It occurs there as a secondary mineral in oxidized copper deposits with the source of the rare earth yttrium likely from the surrounding sediments.

Ref. Handbook of Mineralogy, Anthony et al (1995) and MSA at http://www.handbookofmineralogy.org/pdfs/decrespignyite-(Y).pdf

Named after Professor William Alexander Deer, a mineralogist and petrologist at Cambridge University in England. Deerite is a rare mineral found “in meta-ironstones and Cu-Fe sulfide deposits, in blueschist facies metasediments formed at high pressure and low temperature.” Localities for Deerite include in the United States, Italy, France, Greece, Turkey, New Caledonia, and a few other occurrences.

Ref. Handbook of Mineralogy, Anthony et al (1995) and MSA at http://www.handbookofmineralogy.org/pdfs/deerite.pdf

Named for the Curator of Mineralogy at the Museum of Natural History in Geneva, Switzerland, Jacques Deferne. Defernite is a rare mineral that is found only in its type locality at Guneyce-Ikizdere in the Black Sea region of Turkey and in the Kombat mine in the Otjozondjupa region of Namibia. In Turkey, Defernite is found in skarn at a granite-limestone contact and in Namibia within a body of un-banded, granular massive hausmannite.

Ref. Handbook of Mineralogy, Anthony et al (1995) and MSA at http://www.handbookofmineralogy.org/pdfs/defernite.pdf