FLUORESCENT "YOOPERLITE": BEACHES OF THE KEWEENAW PENINSULA, MICHIGAN, USA - NR!

Description

Back in 2017 there was an interesting new mineral find in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  A local collector, while goofing around at night on a rocky cobblestone beach along Lake Superior in northern Michigan with a longwave ultraviolet flashlight started to find a few individual pebbles of various sizes scattered along the beach that had bright orange fluorescence under the UV lamp.  He brought some of these home and then went to work to try to figure out just what they were.
Rocks were subsequently sent to
Michigan State University in Lansing,
Michigan Tech University in Houghton (my Alma mater), and the University of Saskatchewan to try to find an answer.  The analysis from the universities all came back the same, these are rocks scientifically classified as "syenite clasts containing fluorescent sodalite." The original discoverer decided to call them "
yooperlites" in reference to the name "
Yooper", which is the common area nickname referring to people who live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan north of the Mackinac Bridge.
Prior to this discovery in 2017, the mineral sodalite had never been found in the state of Michigan, so this led to the big question "where did these fluorescent sodalite in syenite nodules come from"?  Well the answer is quite interesting, and the process by which they came to the shores of Michigan is the same natural process that transported native copper chunks from the rich copper veins of northern Michigan as far south as
central Indiana and southern Illinois where the glaciers stopped (think Chicago LOL)!  That's more than 400 miles from the source!
So this auction is for a single cabinet sized beautifully rounded, polished by the waves of Lake Superior nodule of what should really be known as "Float sodalite in syenite" that was moved from it's original home in Canada south to Michigan by the glaciers some 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.
North of Michigan and on the north shore of Lake Superior in Ontario, Canada there is a large area of hills that are rich in sodalite in syenite.  When glaciation occurred here 10 to 12 thousand years ago, the glaciers scoured the tops of these ancient rock flows, and chunks of the material were gouged out of the bedrock and moved sometimes hundreds of miles as the glaciers grew and expanded southward, just as the glaciers picked up native copper in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan and moved it south to Chicago!  So these pieces were picked up in Canada and moved south and deposited by the glaciers along the south shore of Lake Superior as the glaciers melted and receded.  The wave and ice action from the lake subsequently polished them smooth on the outside, and that's the current story of how these cool fluorescent lake nuggets got to where they are today.  It still amazes me that these were totally unknown prior to 2017!
Anyway, that's the backstory on this cool cabinet specimen of fluorescent sodalite in syenite that was collected along the Lake Superior shoreline, known better by the local name of "Yooperlite".
I acquired these back in early August of 2019 at a rock swap at the old Quincy Mine Hoist on top of the hill in Hancock in Michigan's Upper Peninsula Copper Country.  I bought them from a young 12 year old local Yooper lad who had been hunting for them on the beaches of the Keweenaw Peninsula over the summer.  He had a bunch of specimens that he had found, and I made his day by purchasing them all from him.  I'm a Yooper myself and I love going back home for the month of August each year for all the great rockhounding, swap meets and shows in the Copper Country of northern Michigan.  You gotta love a place where 75 degrees or so is the normal daily high temperature in the month of August!
Sorry, I digressed there a bit!  So this is a Lake Superior rounded nugget that measures 7.5 x 5.7 x 3.7 cm in size (about 3.0 x 2.25 x 1.5 inches), it weighs 8.8 ounces, and it comes professionally labeled and ready for immediate display.
All sides of the specimens show scattered rich inclusions of sodalite that FLUORESCE a rich bright neon orange as depicted in the last two photos that were taken under a 9 watt longwave Way Too Cool UV flashlight.
This Way Too Cool UV flashlight is just freaking awesome.  You can spot fluorescent specimens from 50+ feet away with it at night.  But it makes it hard to get good photos.  You can't put the specimen directly under the light or it is too bright for the camera to handle, even when using a low light night camera.  You have to point the light past the specimen and let just the low edge light hit the piece.  Anyway, it makes fluorescent photos challenging but it is an incredible light for nighttime rockhounding.  I'll be using it looking for Yooperlite on the beaches of Lake Superior in Northern Michigan myself just about the time this auction starts lol! Wish me luck ;o)!
We are offering this fine specimen for a SUPER LOW starting bid and NO RESERVE, so lets have some fun. PayPal is our preferred method of payment, but we do accept many other payment types.  Please contact us if you are interested in other payment methods we accept.  Shipping will be calculated and charged at cost depending on the winning bidders choice of shipping options and the ship-to locality.
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