A 435-year-old Peruvian mine just gave science a brand-new mineral

European mineralogists have formally described argentotennantite-(Fe), a new member of the tetrahedrite mineral group, approved by the International Mineralogical Association under proposal IMA 2023-126. It comes from the San Genaro mine in Castrovirreyna Province, Huancavelica, Peru, at nearly 5,000 meters elevation — a mine that first opened in 1591. The full description, by Jiří Sejkora of the National Museum in Prague with colleagues from Pisa and elsewhere, was published in the European Journal of Mineralogy. The holotype is preserved at the National Museum in Prague and the studied crystal at the University of Pisa.