A black or brown mineral containing manganese oxides and water, often found as a coating in rocks and used as an ore of manganese.
Variant or alternate form of asbolan, from Greek asbole (soot) with the mineralogical suffix -ane or -ane, indicating a hydrated mineral form. This spelling became more common in 19th-century mineralogy texts.
Asbolane and asbolan describe the same dark manganese-rich mineral, but mineralogists couldn't agree on the spelling—a reminder that scientific names are sometimes chosen somewhat arbitrarily and take time to standardize!
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