This Tellurite is the most stunning specimen of its kind available for you to bring home from [ Ссылка ]. Tellurite is rare, and this comes to you from Colorado, likely from near Gunnison, Boulder, or Cripple Creek.

According to Mindat, it is typically "white to yellow, bright yellow to orange-yellow; nearly colorless in transmitted light" and found in 68 localities across 4 Continents, in 16 Countries, 6 states, and in Boulder, Gunnison, Hinsdale, San Juan, and Teller Counties within Colorado, so no matter where you are, keep an eye out for a rock like this the next time you're out on a hike!

Tellurite "occurs as prismatic to acicular transparent yellow to white orthorhombic crystals... in the oxidation zone of mineral deposits in association with native tellurium, emmonsite and other tellurium minerals," according to Wikipedia. Its name comes from its Tellurium content, which, Tellus, is "the Latin name for the planet Earth. It was first described in 1842 in Faţa Băii, Zlatna, Alba County, Romania. Its hardness is 2 and its specific gravity is around 5.9.

Wikipedia has more on Telluride, Colorado that feels relevant and worth including, and it's quite interesting that while tellurite and other tellurium-bearing minerals were never found near Telluride, it was still renamed to Telluride from Columbia in 1878 (primarily to avoid confusion with the town in California with the same name, and) in the hopes that tellurides would be found nearby after many other Tellurite discoveries in other parts of the state in the years prior. Despite never finding any Tellurium nearby, the many mines in the area still produced a bunch of zinc, lead, copper, silver, and other gold ores. Due to the rickety tramway the miners would ride up the steep hills every day to go to work in the holes extending deep into the sulfuric ground, the town quickly got a nickname - "to-hell-you-ride". Telluride later became the home of Nikola Tesla and Tom Cruise.

Tellurite is incredibly important. Tellurium is one of the few metals you will find that can be mixed with Gold. It's as rare as Platinum, it's mildly toxic, and it's critical to the future for technology. It's far more common in the rest of the Universe than it is on Earth's crust, as Earth lost most of it early during its formation billions of years ago...

This is one fascinating element and rock!

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