Pretulalpe

One of the very few minerals in which scandium is an essential, named element rather than a trace.

Pretulite was described in 1998 from the Pretulalpe, a ridge in the Fischbach Alps of Styria, where it turned up in lazulite bearing quartz veins. Scandium almost never forms minerals of its own because its ionic size lets it hide inside other structures, so a scandium phosphate was a real find. Further occurrences were then recognized nearby in Lower Austria.