Minerals.net December 2015 Newsletter

Welcome to the Year-end edition of the Minerals.net Newsletter! We would like to take the opportunity to wish all our readers a happy and healthy new year and a year of great finds to all mineral and gemstone enthusiasts!

Visit to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC is one of the most important museums of its type in the world. It has one of the greatest mineral and gemstones collections on public exhibit, displaying stunning showpieces to rare reference species (including many which can be classified as world’s best of the species.) Over 3,500 world-class specimens are on public display in the museum, and all are labelled with their names and localities. Hershel Friedman made a visit to the museum and wrote a museum report with photos of the collection. Since there are many pictures, the report is divided into several sections:

• Part 1: Introduction to Smithsonian Museum Postings
• Part 2: Gem Minerals
• Part 3: Precious Metals and Metal Compounds
• Part 4: Collection Cases
• Part 5: Oxides, Sulfides, and Halides
• Part 6: Carbonates
• Part 7: Phosphates, Molybdates, and Silicates

New Mineral Pictures from the Smithsonian

We added pictures of many of the specimens that we photographed in the Smithsonian collection to our mineral and gemstone detail pages. This adds a dimension of some iconic or otherwise excellent examples for a species on our photo section. To view a list of the new pages that were updated with additional pictures, please visit our Twitter page, which outlines all of these new photos, at ww.twitter.com/mineralsnet

Minerals.net Trip to Suffern, N.Y. Agate Deposit

This past November, Minerals.net sponsored a field trip for the North Jersey club to an Agate deposit in Suffern, New York. This trip was organized by Hershel Friedman with club coordinators Jeff Wilson and Dave Shapiro. The trip was a great success and everyone came home with something good. For more details and pictures, please visit this article on our news blog at http://news.minerals.net/.

New Minerals Added

The following new minerals have been added to our mineral detail pages. We are working on completing the rest of the important oxides on this round.

• Brucite
• Gummite

We have also rewritten the content for the minerals below, with new and updated information and photos.

• Chromite
• Chrysoberyl
• Goethite
• Magnetite
• Rutile

Minerals.net Featured Ads

We put a full page ad in the coming edition of Rocks & Minerals magazine, as well as in the Tucson Show EZ-Guide.

Look out for the January-February 2016 Rocks & Minerals, and if you are Tucson, make sure to pick up the official Tucson Showguide from XPOpress.

Give us Feedback!

We appreciate feedback! Please email any comments or suggestions, and any errors or bugs you may find on our website. To contact us, please visit our Contact page.