This is a very large, heavily weathered but all natural Blue Apatite Crystal from Brazil.

85 x 45 x 30mm

Average Weight: 220g

Apatite's bright, lustrous crystals form hexagonal shapes with off-center terminations. They are found in vugs (small cavities in rock), often associated with quartz and calcite.

Apatite is a group of phosphate minerals, usually referring to hydroxylapatite, fluorapatite and chlorapatite, with high concentrations of OH⁻, F⁻ and Cl⁻ ions, respectively, in the crystal. The formula of the admixture of the three most common endmembers is written as Ca₁₀(PO₄)₆(OH,F,Cl)₂, and the crystal unit cell formulae of the individual minerals are written as Ca₁₀(PO₄)₆(OH)₂, Ca₁₀(PO₄)₆F₂ and Ca₁₀(PO₄)₆Cl₂.

The mineral was named apatite by the German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1786,^[3] although the specific mineral he had described was reclassified as fluorapatite in 1860 by the German mineralogist Karl Friedrich August Rammelsberg. Apatite is often mistaken for other minerals. This tendency is reflected in the mineral's name, which is derived from the Greek word απατείν (apatein), which means to deceive or to be misleading.^[4]

Apatite is one of a few minerals produced and used by biological micro-environmental systems. Apatite is the defining mineral for 5 on the Mohs scale. Hydroxyapatite, also known as hydroxylapatite, is the major component of tooth enamel and bone mineral. A relatively rare form of apatite in which most of the OH groups are absent and containing many carbonate and acid phosphate substitutions is a large component of bone material.

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