Images

Photo of the headframe at the Canyon Mine (Pinyon Plain), AZ

Figure 1. Photographs of commercial, expanded vermiculite ore from the four major historical sources: Libby, Montana; Palabora, South Africa; Louisa, Virginia; and Enoree, South Carolina. Scale of the rightmost image in each set is the same as the left image unless otherwise labeled.

Monazite grains with rare earth elements lanthenum, cerium and neodinium are associated with zirconium, pyrite and potassium feldspar. Mineral identification performed by a combination of scanning of electron microscopy (SEM) and electron microprobe.

View of frost-heaved blocks above the Middle Mountain porphyry Mo prospect, looking west. Mountains to the west expose rocks of the Grizzly Peak caldera and Twin Lakes batholith, including a hydrothermal alteration scar in the center-left of the image that may be associated with mineralization. Located near Winfield, Colorado.

Panoramic view of Webster Pass, which is part of the Montezuma mining district, Colorado.  

USGS scientist David Fey walking through the Eureka Graben in the Silverton caldera complex.

Intensely altered propylitic rocks (red and yellow) in the Red Mountain mining district, overprinting the regional, propylitically altered igneous rocks (grayish-green), peaks at top of image. View to west.

Layered deposit of unconsolidated heavy mineral sands along the shores of Folly Beach, South Carolina.

Sample of eudialyte (pink) within layered vein consisting of quartz, albite, and sodic amphibole, Dora Bay, Alaska. Size of sample is 11 by 9 cm. Sample of coarse-grained, tabular bastnäsite within matrix of ferruginous dolomite, Birthday Claim, Mountain Pass, California. Photographs by Philip Verplanck, U.S. Geological Survey. SIR 2010-5070-J

A sample of finchite, a newly discovered uranium mineral. Finchite is the yellow material on the surface of the rock. Finchite is found in the late Pleistocene sediments deposited during the Illinoian glacial stage.

The Southern High Plains of New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. USGS conducted a uranium assessment in this region in 2015.

The Southern High Plains of New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. USGS conducted a uranium assessment in this region in 2015.

Between Lamesa and Big Spring, Texas, runs the Sulfur Spring Draw, a dry creek. It's the site of an economic calcrete-type uranium deposit, the Sulfur Springs Draw Deposit, where a new mineral was discovered in 2015.

A calcrete outcropping near Sulfur Springs Draw in Texas. This deposit dates to the Pliocene and Pleistocene, and hosts uranium-vanadate minerals.

A uranium-vanadate mineral in calcrete. This sample came from near the Sulfur Springs Draw in Texas. USGS conducted an assessment of uranium resources in this region in 2015.

Microscopic gold and lead particles surrounded by organic and phosphorus-rich material in a municipal biosolids sample (combined surface topography and atomic weight images).

A sample of finchite, a newly discovered uranium mineral. Finchite is the yellow material on the surface of the rock. Finchite is found in the late Pleistocene sediments deposited during the Illinoian glacial stage.

USGS scientist Bradley Van Gosen examines rock layers for the newly discovered mineral finchite near Lamesa, Texas.

A scanning electron microscope image of the newly discovered mineral finchite. The Denver Microbeam Lab provided this scan of finchite in order to help describe and identify the mineral as a new one. Finchite is a uranium mineral first observed in Martin County, Texas.

Cinnabar mine site in Idaho.

An abandoned mine shaft in the Alabama Hills, California, located near the contact of the Alabama Hills Granite with metamorphic wall rock.