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LITHOEN

Mineral group

Mica

Sheet silicates whose structure produces perfect basal cleavage. Muscovite is a species within it; “biotite” is not.

A cut and polished granite surface showing interlocking pale and dark crystals a few millimetres across.
A granite from the Kösseine massif, Germany. The interlocking crystals of quartz, feldspar and mica are visible without magnification — the coarse texture that records slow cooling at depth. Locality: Kösseine, Bavaria, Germany.

Georgenhausen, CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC-BY-SA-4.0 · source · Derivative: Downscaled to 1000 px wide by the Wikimedia thumbnail service; no cropping, no colour or content alteration.

Classification

group kind
group

How this record is known

1
Settled consensus
Cited as the accepted position of the discipline.

1 of 1 claims on this page cite at least one registered source. Counts describe how each statement is known, not how likely it is to be true.

What Lithoen records

Each claim states how it is known and cites its evidence.

EstablishedNot a species; a group.

“Mica” is not an accepted mineral species: no entry of that name appears in the IMA List of Minerals. It denotes a group of sheet silicates that includes muscovite as an accepted species.

  • definition basis: Absence from the IMA List of Minerals, which is the list of accepted species.
  • precision note: The name remains in ordinary scientific use. It is recorded as a grouping so that it stays usable without being mistaken for a species.

Evidence support: Supported by the cited evidence one source

Evidence: Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification, International Mineralogical Association 2026 Primary authority

In the knowledge graph

Figures

Silvery platy muscovite crystals intergrown with white blocky albite.
Muscovite intergrown with albite. Muscovite is a sheet silicate whose perfect basal cleavage follows the planes of its structure; albite is the sodium end member of the plagioclase series.

Robert M. Lavinsky, CC BY-SA 3.0 · CC-BY-SA-3.0 · source

Record last updated 2026-09-06. Corrections follow the published corrections policy; superseded claims are retained, never silently edited.