stibnite - stibnite crystals on matrix - unit of four student specimens

Stibnite Sb₂S₃

Stibnite, antimony trisulfide, is characterized by its bladed habit, metallic luster and lead gray to black streak and is commonly found in radiating crystal groups. It's the chief ore of antimony. The metal is widely used in batteries, in pewter, as a flame retardant in textiles and in bearings and rubber, among other uses.

Egyptians used powdered stibnite, kuhl (or kohl), as eye makeup. Pedanius Diascorides, a first century A.D. Greek physician, named it stimmi platopthalmos which became stibium, in Latin. Basilius Valentinus, supposedly a 15th century alchemist and Benedictine monk, showed that the mineral contained sulfur. The name may have been a pseudonym for German salt manufacturer Johann Thölde. Like water, antimony expands when it freezes.

Stibnite occurs in veins in carbonate rocks such as limestone. These carbonate replacement deposits produce 60% of the world's antimony. An example is the deposit in Xikuangshan, Hunan Province, China, where nearly pure stibnite can occur in lenses tens of meters long. Another 20% of the world's antimony comes from gold-antimony epithermal deposits, formed when hot mineralizing fluids circulate through fractures in the rocks to form mineralized veins. An example is the Yellow Pine deposit in Idaho, where the Yellow Pine Mine was a major producer of gold and antimony and is now in reclamation.

In 2013, the U.S. imported 85% of the antimony that was used domestically - 71% of that came from China, the world's leader in the production of that metal.

This stibnite comes from Morocco. No accurate locality data was available.

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