Fichtel Mountains

A mineral as soft as talc and barely denser than water, sitting inside buried pine logs.

Fichtelite was first described in 1841 from fossil pine wood in a peat bog in the Fichtelgebirge of northern Bavaria. Its specific gravity is 1.032, so it only just sinks, and its Mohs hardness of 1 matches talc. It has since been found in organic-rich modern marine sediments, which makes it a marker for buried plant resin chemistry.