A rare mineral or fossil that is incomplete or imperfectly formed.
From Greek 'ateles' (incomplete) + '-ite' (a common suffix for minerals and fossils), where '-ite' comes from Greek 'lithos' meaning stone. The term was used in 19th-century mineralogy for samples lacking full crystallization.
Geologists collecting rocks faced a naming puzzle: when a crystal was interrupted mid-growth by geological forces, they couldn't call it a complete mineral—so they gave it a Greek prefix meaning 'incomplete' and moved on!
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