A 5-Year Field Investigation of the Spinelli Quarry

摘要

In April 2008, the author obtained permission to specimen mine the long inactive Spinelli Quarry in Glastonbury, Hartford County, Connecticut, famous for its samarskite crystals. Samarskite was mined from this site in the 1930s for some of the earliest radiometric dating studies, the quarry also produced many classic specimens found in museum collections, but has been idle for nearly 80 years. After five years of field work, many new and significant specimens of samarskite, plus columbite-(Fe) and monazite-(Ce) were carefully recovered.