Khibiny is available from the Ed Leith Cretaceous Menagerie; contact person: Mrs. Sharon Kirsch, se_kirsch@umanitoba.ca. The price is $190 (Canadian) or $170 (US) plus shipping (courier DHL shipping is available at a discount rate upon request). Sorry, payments by check only! Checks should be made payable to the University of Manitoba.
Khibiny is 468 pages long and is subdivided into the following sections: Introduction (8 pages), Summary of the Geology (70 pages), Minerals (260 pages) and appendices (Luminescent Minerals, Discoverers, References, Index of Minerals and Index of Mineral Localities). The book is hardbound and comes in a dust jacket featuring one of Khibiny's hallmark minerals, astrophyllite. All of the sections are lavishly illustrated with a total of some 600-plus figures, including over 370 full-color photos of mineral specimens, some of which (e.g., eudialyte, astrophyllite and wadeite) feature the best specimens of a given species ever found worldwide. Anyone looking to learn more about peralkaline agpaitic rocks and their spectacular mineralogy will find Khibiny an excellent introduction to the subject. This monograph is also an indispensable resource for any serious academic student of these unusual rocks. In addition to the mineral descriptions, photographs and crystal drawings, it contains 772 original mineral analyses, 33 locality and geological maps and cross-sections, 14 profiles showing variations in the chemistry of major and accessory minerals across the Khibiny pluton, and 342 references to the Russian and Western literature. Click on the image at left for a peek inside the book!
Khibiny, written by Victor Yakovenchuk, Gregory Ivanyuk, Yakov Pakhomovsky and Yury Men'shikov (Geological Institute of the Kola Science Centre), edited by Frances Wall (Natural History Museum, London), and published in Finland, is a comprehensive and excellently produced treatise on the mineralogy of the Khibiny (Khibina) alkaline complex in the famous Kola region of Russia's North. The Khibiny complex is the largest intrusion of nepheline syenites and related rocks in the world and is well known to the academic and hobbyist communities as one of the richest mineral localities in the world. Some 440 (!) mineral species have been described from Khibiny to date, of which 89 have been discovered at this locality, i.e. 2% of the total number of mineral species known to date (for comparison, this is more new species than has come out of Norway, South Africa or Brazil). This fabulous book summarizes some 80 years of intensive mineralogical research at Khibiny, including the authors' own previously unpublished data and findings. Read a review of the book by Peter Tarassoff here.