New Nigerian Green Beryl Find
Green beryl crystals weighing 41.90 ct (left) and 4.08 ct (right) from a new source in Nigeria display concentrated color zones. Photo by Rhonda Wilson; courtesy of Rhonda Wilson (left) and Maxwell Hain (right).
A unique new find of green beryl was discovered in 2024 in the Nasarawa Eggon mine in Nigeria. A few dealers at the Pueblo and Mineral City shows carried the material, referring to it as vanadium-bearing beryl (see above). Most of the stones had concentrated color-zoned bands near the terminations. Energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence revealed iron and trace amounts of vanadium and chromium in the green zones, with the near-colorless areas primarily containing trace amounts of iron. The concentrated green color bands near the terminations exhibited pinkish orange fluorescence under long-wave (365 nm) UV light. The banding observed in these exciting new beryl samples is similar to that of Torrington emeralds from Australia.
