Three new minerals found in southern New Mexico

What do a Naval officer, a geologist and a university professor have in common?

They all have newly discovered minerals in New Mexico named after them.

Ray DeMark, a former Albuquerque Public Schools instructor for the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, found three minerals — raydemarkite, virgilluethite, and stunorthropite — on Cookes Peak in Luna County in 2016. In December 2024, the International Mineralogical Association approved the specimens as new minerals, according to a news release issued Friday by the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources.

“Some people have said, ‘It’s about time!’” DeMark, who served aboard aircraft carriers and supervised nuclear arsenal in the Navy, said with a laugh Monday in an interview.

Virgilluethite was named after Virgil W. Lueth, former director of the bureau’s Mineral Museum from 1994 to 2022. Stunorthropite was named after the late Stuart A. Northrop, a professor of geology at the University of New Mexico from 1928 to 1969, according to the release. Raydemarkite was named after DeMark, who plucked the minerals from the craggy gray spire north of Deming.

John Rakovan, senior mineral museum curator at the New Mexico Mineral Museum, said there are about 20 to 30 new minerals discovered every year, usually by collectors.

DeMark, who has been collecting minerals for more than 50 years, was in Luna County trying to find fluorite, another mineral, and found the specimens that looked unusual to him.

“When you find something new, that inspires you to have it looked at,” DeMark said.

Collectors like DeMark who don’t have advanced tools will enlist scientists to help identify what they find, Rakovan said. Lueth, who is also an emeritus senior mineralogist/economic geologist from the New Mexico Bureau of Geology, helped identify DeMark’s minerals. Scientists at the University of Arizona also assisted in the project before submitting the minerals to the international association.

Two of the minerals, raydemarkite and virgilluethite, are called polymorphs, meaning they have the same chemistry but different atomic arrangements, Rakovan said. These two minerals are polymorphs of hydrus molybdenum oxide, the release said. Stunorthropite has ammonia in it in addition to hydrus molybdenum oxide, according to the release.

Raydemarkite occurs as “sprays of needle- or prism-shaped, colorless crystals,” the release said.

Virgilluethite occurs in groups of “yellow-green crystals with a platy, layered growth habit,” according to the release.

Stunorthropite is found as “milky-white crystals that sometimes replace the yellow mineral sidwillite during formation,” the release said.

None of the minerals have any commercial value, so they are more valuable on a scientific level, DeMark said.

“It’s unique; it just adds to the overall scientific knowledge of the Earth,” he said.

Rakovan said discovering new minerals increases scientists’ understanding of the Earth and gives them a tool for understanding how the earth has formed and evolved.

“They represent a very evolved type of planetary body — for example, they might exist on Mars, but they probably don’t exist on the bigger planets,” Rakovan said of the new minerals.

In a more practical sense, minerals are used in many applications, including wristwatches.

“When scientists discover a new mineral, and we learn about its properties, there might be something where we can actually utilize that mineral for a technological or industrial purpose,” Rakovan said.

There might be potential applications for the new minerals discovered by DeMark, according to Rakovan, but none have been found yet.

The minerals are on display at the New Mexico Mineral Museum.

The recognition of new minerals comes as the Legislature considers a bill to make smithsonite the mineral for New Mexico. House Bill 411, co-sponsored by Rep. Gail Armstrong, R-Magdalena, and Rebecca Dow, R-Truth or Consequences, is awaiting a vote on the House floor before moving onto the Senate.