The ultimate source of these mineral phosphates may be referred in most cases to the apatite widely distributed in crystalline rocks.
Deciphering continental breakup in eastern Australia by combining apatite (U-Th)/He and fission track thermochronometers.
It is the principal inorganic constituent of bones, and hence of the "bone-ash" of commerce (see Phosphorus); it occurs with fluorides in the mineral apatite (q.v.); and the concretions known as coprolites largely consist of this salt.
In Ontario apatite has been worked for a long time in deposits of similar nature.
Other minerals present include diopside, pargasite, spinel, phlogopite, apatite, graphite, pyrrhotite and zircon (Davidson 1943 ).