Explore
Sylvinite: potash ore
Back
Sylvinite: potash ore. Lower Carboniferous. Near Sussex, New Brunswick. New Brunswick Museum (NBME 1029). Specimen width 15 cm. Sylvinite is the ore rock mined for potash. It is a mixture of the minerals sylvite and halite. During the Carboniferous, the low-lying areas of the Maritimes Basin in western New Brunswick were flooded by the Windsor Sea. As sea levels changed in the Carboniferous period, the salt water evaporated, concentrating the minerals into potash, salt and gypsum. The potash deposit near Sussex is the second in largest in the world after a large deposit in Saskatchewan.
