Catalog Search Guide
You can search our catalog using different mineral attributes. For example, you can search by color such as green, yellow or purple, or by chemical elements such as uranium, calcium or iron, or by mineral groups such as phosphate, silicate or carbonate. You can also filter by crystal habit like crystal, geode or crystal on matrix, by specimen size such as thumbnail, small, medium or cabinet, and by features such as radioactive or fluorescent minerals.
Cuprosklodowskite
Cuprosklodowskite is a rare secondary uranium silicate, a copper-uranyl mineral of the sklodowskite group with the formula Cu(UO2)2(HSiO4)2·6(H2O). It forms by the oxidation of primary uranium and copper ores, typically as grass-green to yellow-green acicular or bladed crystals, often gathered into radiating sprays and crusts. Strongly radioactive, it is prized by advanced collectors for its vivid color and delicate needle-like habit rather than for size.
The species was first described in 1933 from the Kalongwe deposit in Katanga, then Belgian Congo, its type locality, and named — mistakenly, as it turns out — as the copper analogue of sklodowskite, itself honoring Marie Skłodowska-Curie. The finest specimens in the world come from the Musonoi Mine near Kolwezi in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where bright acicular sprays occur on siliceous matrix alongside vandenbrandeite, kasolite, schoepite, uranophane, and torbernite. Additional classic occurrences include the Shinkolobwe Mine and Kambove, also in Katanga, as well as Jáchymov in the Czech Republic.
Because well-crystallized, aesthetic material is confined to a handful of localities, documented Congolese and Jáchymov specimens are especially sought after by uranium-mineral and micromineral collectors, systematic silicate collectors, and anyone assembling a suite of Katanga Copperbelt secondary uranium species alongside becquerelite, brochantite, and compreignacite.
