Dear Roberto,

The answer is simply: No!

Until now charoite has not been found in any other region of the world.

Look at the website mindat.org => charoite.

Mindat.org is now the world's largest public database of mineral information.

Best regards,

Guenter

Hey thanks your question made me look at this beautiful mineral.

As per the current available data the only place on Earth where Charoite occurs is  within a syenite massif, enriched with K,  in metasomatic rocks, at the contact of the massif with limestone, i.e., the Murun massif, Chara River area, Aldan Shield, SW Yakutia (Sakha Republic).

Hope researchers may find a new occurrence.

Roberto:

A few months back I had a chance to have a look at this beautiful mineral/rock in a Museum in Siberia, which to our knowledge surprisingly does not occur anywhere else in the world. Kindly see this link:

http://www.gemselect.com/gem-info/charoite/charoite-info.php

Best

Syed

Color-wise this ancient intaglio from Asia Minor is comparable to your charoite. It is actually amethyst with gold (3 cm across).

Hi everybody: some minerals and rocks are originated by such a particular local combination and/or enrichment of elements that are unique of certain localities. As a mineral collector I love such rare specimens, which could be called "the 100 feet minerals", not because of their size, of course, but regarding those few feet of the crust where they occur! Examples are many: purple adamite from Mapimi, Durango, a mineral which usually is light green in color, but in this place, in just a few galleries of the mines, has been "tinted" by manganese, cation responsible for such unusual and beautiful color. Also tanzanite is a variety of zoisite, mneral which is also usually green, tinted by manganese, only found in one place of the planet, Arusha, Tanzania. Beryl is a multicolored mineral, from colorless to golden, from green to blue and pink, but in only one place in the world, some Tertiary rhyolites in Utah (U.S.A.) has adquired a deep cherry red color, of course also due to manganese, this variety is called bixbyite. Other species contain such as unusual combination of cations which also make them impossible to repeat: the trio benitoite-neptunite-joaquinite of San Benito County, in California, constitutes a really strange combination of rare minerals, containing all sort of cations, such as Ba, Ti, K, Li, Na, Ce, Nb, Mn and Fe, one as a geologist really wonders about the hydrothermal process responsible for their bizarre compositions, especially taking into accout that these minerals occur in natrolite veins (...) cutting a serpentinite! Also, a combination of Cr and Pb, which is found is two or three places in the world (Dundas, Tasmania, and Beressov, Urals), is the beautiful mineral crocoite, a lead chromate, is somewhat difficult to understand, as Pb is a typical mesothermal vein mineral and Cr is usually linked to peridotites and serpentinites as accesory or magmatic chromite. So, to form crocoite lead bearing veins should cut through serpentinised peridotite bodies! Just thinking about the probability that this happened adds to the miracle of the genesis of such rare species. Of course, charoite is one of those odd-ball minerals too! But its lilac-violet color is not due to chromofore cations, but to crystal structural imperfections or abnormal cationic susbtitutions, which give rise to allochromatic colors. Usually Na and Li bearing minerals have allochromatic colors, even being these alkaline cations colorless in solution, for example: glaucophane-riebeckite (blue amphiboles), sodalite-hauyne, elbaite tourmaline, charoite, holmsquistite (Li-bearing amphibole), and many more. With regards. Sebastian.  

 T see this mineral., I feel so happy as geology student am I

I found a photo of a piece of Charoite rock (attached) that shows a cross section of a probable Quartz crystal, which is similar to the probable Quartz crystals in my rock slab. The difference is in the orientation of the cut in relation to the Quartz main cristallographic axis. In the photo below the Quartz crystal is cut perpendicularly to the axis, while in my slab the crystals are cut along the axis.

I am wandering what such Quartz crystals tell us about the geological history of the Charoite rock. My first impression is that fairly large fissures or vugs are needed to let Quartz crystals growing so large (a few cm), and such fractures can form in an extensional tectonic regime (e.g. during the late stage of rising, at the periphery of a solidified syenite stock). The Quartz crystals, grown in some type of late cooling hydrotermal vein (a multiphase event, as shown by the crystal zoning in cross section), must have been dragged into the Charoite "paste" by further syenite stock rising movement in the crust. This would also explain the minute folding of the Chaorite matrix.

I found another picture of probable Quartz in Charoite! The specimen in the attached photo shows Quartz crystals concentrated on the side of what I think is the original "large fissure". From this sample I would deduce that the chronological order is first Quartz crystallization in a fissure, then fissure filling by Charoite, and last tectonic movements that drag the Quartz crystals in the fissure-filling Chorite "paste".

I recently visited the magnificent Natural History Museum of Oxford (UK), and spotted a lovely slab of Charoite in the upper gallery, North side.

I attach a photo of it.

Dear Roberto:

Are you sure that hexagonal crystal in the charoite is reall quartz? Nepheline also forms sometimes perfect hexagonal prisms, and the alkaline nature of this rock suggests the possibility that it could be silica undersaturated, thus containing feldspathoids! I got a wonderful sample of charoite as a gift while assisting to the XXVIII International Geological Congress, in Moscow, on august 1984, in that country this colorful stone is used to make ornaments, ash trays, and the like. Among other things, including tourism and cultural activities (the Hermitage and Natural Science museums in Saint Petersburg), we made excursions all over the U.R.S.S. One 8 day-trip to Irkutsk, on Lake Baikal, sailing the western shore and going to the lapislazuli mines of the Czars (the phogopite books there were meter-sized, but I settled with a 20 cm and a 10 cm wide pseudo-hexagonal books), to the Primorsky Beach, where crops out a wonderful rapakivi granite so similar to the huge Parguaza rapakivi Granite outcropping in southern Venezuela..., to the outcrops of "grenvillian" high grade marbles, wih fresh forsterite, red spinel and phlogopite or scapolite, related with cordierite-sillimanite metapelitic gneiss ending with a famous nepheline syenite intrusion and skarn, with a dyke of alkali pegmatite, there the zircon and titanite crystals where visible at the naked eye!... Another excursion was to the Ukraine, where we visited the Korosten Anorthositic Complex and the Voilyn pegmatite field, there I got from the dumps a wonderful fist- sized microcline crystal, an 8 cm wide slice of bicolored topaz, and a graphic intergrowth of smoky quartz with cream-colored microcline, very showy. With regards, Sebastián.

Dear Sebastiàn,

I went back to the source of one of the photos above, and I found reference to Quartz grains, not Nepheline in the picture caption (https://e-rocks.com/item/jwt564856/charoite).

Also, a quick search shows that lapidaries started tumbling small pieces of Charoite rock, resulting in a number of semi-transparent stones (with thin veinlets of purple Charoite included) that are labelled Quartz.

In absence of a proper analysis, however, it is more prudent to refer to a possibility rather than to a certainty.

Dear Roberto:

Yes, the only way to ascertain of which mineral is that hexagonal crystal is through X-ray diffraction. But euhedral quartz is usually found in veins and pegmatites, not in skarns or contact rocks. My sample of charoite doesn't have this "quartz", only charoite, light green diopside and a whitish fibbrous mineral that perhpas could be tremolite. Regards, Sebastián.