[Rockhounds] story: mysterious Mayan blue dye revealed

[DonH]

Pmodreski at aol.com wrote:

> Yes, you bet, palygorskite is "mountain leather".
>  
> I actually slipped and hadn't intended that last email to go to the  
> listserv, I'd intended it as an offline comment to someone I'd forwarded the  "Mayan 
> blue dye" link to, but it was no big deal, it came out sounding  reasonably 
> appropriate anyway.


Well in the end it gives people something neat to look up.  Check out 
palygorskite on Wikipedia.  We didn't spend much time on it; there are 
more prominent and important clays... we just finished the clay section, 
and I'm weary of making ball-and-stick drawings and polyhedral models of 
these things... but it seems to be a cool mineral and is worth looking 
up for the curious.

Don