What is "pimelite"

Pimelite \Pim"e*lite\, n. [Gr. pimelh` fat.] (Min.) An apple-green mineral having a greasy feel. It is a hydrous silicate of nickel, magnesia, aluminia, and iron.

n. (context mineralogy English) A hexagonal mineral containing hydrogen, nickel, oxygen, and silicon.

Pimelite was discredited as a mineral species by the International Mineralogical Association (IMA) in 2006, in an article which suggests that “pimelite” specimens are probably willemseite (which is approved), or kerolite (which is also discredited). This was a mass discreditation, and not based on any re-examination of the type material (assuming any exists). Nevertheless, a considerable number of papers have been written, verifying that pimelite is a nickel-dominant smectite. It is always possible to redefine a mineral wrongly discredited.

The mineral was erroneously assumed to be a nickel-rich talc in a paper published in the American Mineralogist in 1979, but it had already been determined to be a smectite as early as 1938, and this was confirmed in another article in the American Mineralogist in 1966. Both nickel-bearing talc and nickel dominant smectite occur at the type locality, Szklary, Ząbkowice Śląskie County, Lower Silesia, Poland.