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Ken, "Specular" iron ore is hematite, Fe2O3 This is the form of hematite which we mined at Marampa mine, Sierra Leone, which I worked on in the 1960s. It is indeed in flat crystals, the whole orebody there being micaceous, with mica one of the principal gangue minerals. You say this is more commonly known as 'shining' ore and I in my turn have to confess that I had never heard of this term before. Certainly, walking around the open pit (we were actually slicing off the top of a hill, so it wasn't the usual hole in the ground), the glare from the ground in the tropical sunshine was quite dazzling at times. Hematite is found in various forms, and in mineralogy textbooks one form is officially called specular hematite. Tony Brewis