APATITE-(CaOH) IN THE FOSSIL BAT GUANO DEPOSIT FROM THE 'DRY' CIOCLOVINA CAVE, SUREANU MOUNTAINS, ROMANIA: REPLY

摘要

In a recent paper, Dumitras et al. (2008) described apatite-(CaOH) from the "dry" Cioclovina Cave, in the Sureanu Mountains, Romania. The paper, submitted to the journal in February 2007, ignored, as a matter of course, the intention of Onac & Effenberger (2007) and Qnta Panzaru & Onac (2008) to re-examine the berlinite samples claimed to be taken from the cave. This fact, as well as other critical opinions about the previous description by Onac et al. (2002, 2005) and Onac & White (2003) of some "exotic" mineral species such as berlinite, burbankite, churchite-(Y), ellestadite-(OH), ellestadite-(Cl), foggite, paratacamite, collinsite and sampleite, led to the Discussion by Onac & Effenberger presented above. The authors stated that "the list of references given by Dumitras et al. (2008) is incomplete, resulting in an incorrect overall statement". The list was, however, as complete as possible when our paper was conceived, and respected the principles of the concision and relevance, which restrict the quotations in a paper to the relevant ones for the paper itself. The paper of Dumitrag et al. (2008) thoroughly described a quite common apatite-(CaOH), with no peculiar characteristics as compared with other apatite -(CaOH) sampled from other cave occurrences. Briefly, the chemical pattern of apatite-(CaOH) from the "dry" Cioclovina Cave, as well as the patterns of all other Ca phosphates from the cave (i.e., brushite and ardealite) does not fit with the presence in the association of (REE+Y)-bearine species such as churchite-(Y) or burbankite mentioned by Onac et al. (2002, 2005) and Onac & White (2003), or with high-temperature species such as berlinite or ellestadite-(OH) mentioned by Onac et al. (2006) and Onac & Effenberger (2007).