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re: There's a psuedohexagonal mineral that came to mind,
dtb — (archived)

Hmm, interesting. The pic of Aragonite at the "mineral gallery" reminds me a lot of some of the other MI images of this little outcrop, with twisty-blobby slightly cylindrical forms, with in one case an odd little flake sticking out like a budding leaf. That seems consistent with the description of forms that Aragonite can take

http://mineral.galleries.com/minerals/carbonat/aragonit/aragonit.htm

I'd encourage interested parties to browse through the Spirit MI images of recent days. Lots of weird looking forms in Peace.

The description also notes that Aragonite forms in hot spring deposits or cavities in volcanic rocks, either of which (especially the latter) seem plausible given the emerging Columbia Hills story.

Last time we had a composition measured (Wishtone), the rock was very high in Phosphorous relative to the plains basalt, but Ca was about the same, for whatever that is worth.

THanks very much for the insight, btw. Over at an active but not particularly expert forum (Mark Carey's), they seem to have convinced themselves that those hexagonal things are crystalline form of calcium sulfate. Maybe that's a candidate too, but somehow it didn't feel very right.

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