amarillitenoun · 1930s
Well attestedThe Atacama is so dry that soluble sulfates survive at the surface there instead of washing away.
Amarillite was described in the 1930s from Tierra Amarilla in the Copiapo valley of the Atacama Desert, part of a run of new sodium and iron sulfates that Chilean oxidized copper workings produced in that decade. The type specimen is catalogued 133.69 at the National School of Mines in Paris. Palache, Berman and Frondel fixed its description in the seventh edition of Dana's System of Mineralogy in 1951.
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