garutiite

Garutiite is a rare mineral and is in the platinum group alloys. It's also part of the osmium group. It was discovered in the Loma Peguera deposit, Falcondo Mines, Bonao, Monseñor Nouel Province, Dominican Republic in 2009. It was named in honor of Giorgio Garuti (born 1945), professor at the University of Leoben, Austria, in recognition of his contributions to the understanding of the mineralogy of platinum-group elements.

==Discovery== Garutiite was found accidentally in a broader investigation of platinum group minerals associated with ophiolitic chromitites. These chromitites were found inside massive strongly altered ultramafic rocks of the Loma Caribe peridotite in the Cordillera Central of the Dominican Republic. A 3.3 kg block of chromitite was taken from a pod about 10 km south-east of the town of Bonao, was broken apart in the laboratory using electric pulse disaggregation and then separated into heavy-mineral grains by hydroseparation. More than 300 tiny grains between 20 and 120 μm were found. Most of them were platinum-group elements minerals, but about twenty grains of a nickel–iron–iridium (alloy) with a special hexagonal structure were different from any known mineral and were later named garutiite.