Rare earth element Indium reported in Bisbee mine tailings

The rare earth element Indium, used in photovoltaic solar panels, has been found in the mine tailings from  Bisbee, according to Alan Koenig, a USGS geologist in charge of a project to re-examine thousands of samples from major mineral deposits collected over the last 150 years, in hopes of finding minerals that were overlooked when the main targets of gold, copper, silver, etc were recovered.    Koenig is quoted in an interview posted on Yahoo Finance's Australia website.

AZGS Bulletin 194, "Metallic Mineral Districts and Production in Arizona," reports that the Warren mining district produced 355 million pounds of zinc, so having Indium in waste there makes sense, according to Nyal Niemuth, chief of our Economic Geology Section and former Chief Engineer of the AZ Dept. of Mines & Mineral Resources. [Right, Lavender Pit, Bisbee]