A rare yellow or brown mineral that is a magnesium iron silicate, often found in metamorphic rocks.
From Greek 'chondros' (grain or cartilage) + the mineral suffix '-ite', named in the early 1800s because its granular appearance resembled cartilage.
Chondrodite looks like cartilage under a microscope because of its grainy texture, which is why mineralogists gave it a name that literally means 'cartilage stone'—a clever observation by 19th-century scientists!
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