With the help of Mark Holtkamp (http://www.smorf.nl), who has spent hours and hours drawing animated 3D crystal animations in Java, we have been able to incorporate his monumental work into our site. We are busy adding these in to all the existing minerals, and we'll continue adding to all minerals that come in distinct crystal forms. We have already gone through the native elements, the sulfides, oxides, and halides, and are up to the carbonates. We'll hopefully be done with these very soon as well, and will also be adding these in to any new minerals we add and edit. Thanks Mark!
We have gone through John Bett's Mineral Museum and culled over 100 new photographs that we added to the existing minerals pages already completed. We have added more variety and samples to each of the minerals, trying to show all different forms and styles of a particular mineral.
We have also been fervently working on the gemstone section, trying to add in gemstones as we come across them as we edit the minerals. We have added the following new gemstones in the past 3 months:
- Amazonite
- Andesine
- Diopside
- Jade
- Labradorite
- Moonstone
- Orthoclase
- Sunstone
Much of the Phyllosilicates were missing. The Mica and Chlorite Minerals are referenced as accessory minerals in quite a bit of minerals in the system, and since these weren't in the system there was no link to them. Because these minerals are so prevalent, we made sure to add them in. And Talc is quite an important mineral that was missing, being #1 on the Mohs Scale. Here are the new minerals:
Talc
Mica Group:
- Muscovite
- Phlogopite
- Biotite
- Lepidolite
Chlorite Group:
- Chlorite
- Clinochlore
- Cookeite
- Chamosite
Below is a list of all the minerals that we edited in the last 4 months. We have completely re-written the content, especially the outdated locality information, and added new pictures for each of these minerals:
Silica Group:
- Opal
- Coesite
- Tridymite
- Cristobalite
- Melanophlogite
Feldspar Group:
- Orthoclase
- Microcline
- Plagioclase Series
- Albite
- Oligoclase
- Andesine
- Labradorite
- Bytownite
- Anorthite
- Sanidine
- Anorthoclase
- Celsian
Serpentine Group:
Amphible Group:
Pyroxene Group:
- Jadeite
- Enstatite
- Diopside
- Hedenbergite
- Augite
- Johannsenite
- Omphacite
- Spodumene (currenty being worked on at the time of this posting)
Updated Gemstone pages:
