Gilsonite A Forgotten Mineral?

摘要

The largest deposit of Gilsonite in the Western Hemisphere occurs in the Uinta Basin of Northeastern Utah. Although not recognized by the IMA as a mineral species, Ford lists it in his fourth edition of Dana's, A Textbook of Mineralogy, seventeenth printing, 1955, along with several other related solid hydrocarbons. As a mineral specimen it is aesthetically challenged, looking somewhat like obsidian with a concoidal fracture, but a hardness of 2 on Moh's scale and a specific gravity of 1.03 - 1.10 at 77° F (Abraham, 1945).