Sabinaite
Encyclopedia
Sabinaite is a rare carbonate mineral. It crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system
Crystal system
In crystallography, the terms crystal system, crystal family, and lattice system each refer to one of several classes of space groups, lattices, point groups, or crystals...

 as colorless to white prisms within cavities. It is more typically found as powdery coatings and masses. It has a specific gravity
Specific gravity
Specific gravity is the ratio of the density of a substance to the density of a reference substance. Apparent specific gravity is the ratio of the weight of a volume of the substance to the weight of an equal volume of the reference substance. The reference substance is nearly always water for...

 of 3.36.

It has been found in vug
Vug
Vugs are small to medium-sized cavities inside rock that may be formed through a variety of processes. Most commonly cracks and fissures opened by tectonic activity are partially filled by quartz, calcite, and other secondary minerals. Open spaces within ancient collapse breccias are another...

s in a carbonatite
Carbonatite
Carbonatites are intrusive or extrusive igneous rocks defined by mineralogic composition consisting of greater than 50 percent carbonate minerals. Carbonatites may be confused with marble, and may require geochemical verification....

 sill
Sill (geology)
In geology, a sill is a tabular sheet intrusion that has intruded between older layers of sedimentary rock, beds of volcanic lava or tuff, or even along the direction of foliation in metamorphic rock. The term sill is synonymous with concordant intrusive sheet...

 on Montreal Island and within sodalite
Sodalite
Sodalite is a rich royal blue mineral widely enjoyed as an ornamental gemstone. Although massive sodalite samples are opaque, crystals are usually transparent to translucent...

 syenite
Syenite
Syenite is a coarse-grained intrusive igneous rock of the same general composition as granite but with the quartz either absent or present in relatively small amounts Syenite is a coarse-grained intrusive igneous rock of the same general composition as granite but with the quartz either absent or...

 in the alkali intrusion at Mont Saint-Hilaire
Mont Saint-Hilaire
Mont Saint-Hilaire , is an isolated hill, high, in the Montérégie region of southern Quebec. It is about thirty kilometres east of Montreal, and immediately east of the Richelieu River. It is one of the Monteregian Hills...

 in Quebec, Canada.

It was first described in 1980 for an occurrence in the Francon quarry, Montreal Island. It is named after Ann Phyllis Sabina Stenson (1930-), a mineralogist working for the Geological Survey of Canada.
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