asbolane

Asbolane was listed as a mineral "… new for Tsumeb" by Geier (1962) during an address to the South West African Scientific Society but without further detail.

Bartelke (1976; citing unpublished TCL reports from 1973) stated that "The extremely light manganese oxide variety ‘Wad’ forms earthy masses, which may contain up to 20 % cobalt [and can therefore be called] ‘Asbolane’".

Pinch and Wilson (1977) also treated asbolane as a Co-bearing variety of pyrolusite with a note that "Pyrolusite containing up to 20% cobalt has been observed."

Asbolane does not appear in more recently published species lists (Keller 1984; Lombaard et al. 1986; Gebhard 1999; Von Bezing et al. 2014, 2016) and there is no record of asbolane from Tsumeb in the peer-reviewed literature.

Visually, asbolane is easily confused with goethite, heterogenite or pyrolusite.

The occurrence of asbolane at Tsumeb is considered questionable pending reliable identification.

Undetermined