Cork boy is the first person to find a sample of the rarest quartz on the planet in 150 years

A RUNNING family joke led to the discovery of a sample of the world’s rarest quartz, which is only found in Co Cork, by a seven-year-old boy.

Every time Ben O’Driscoll, from Rockforest, near Mallow, and his siblings Sophie, 12, and Ethan, 10, would meet their granddad Kieran Bolster, they would be jovially urged to search the fields for cotterite, which is only found in Rockforest.

Last month, Ben discovered a piece of cotterite near his home, but tragically it occurred three weeks to the day after Kieran passed away.

It was the first discovery of cotterite quartz anywhere on the planet for 150 years. 

Unlike all other types of quartz, which are glassy, cotterite, named after a Miss Cotter from Rockforest who discovered it in 1875, has a distinctive silvery, metallic sheen and has only been found in a single vein in Rockforest in Co Cork.

Ben’s mum Melanie said a visit to Dublin’s Natural History Museum a few months ago really fired Ben’s imagination, and after coming home from soccer training one day, something caught Ben’s eye in the garden.

“He came over to me and said ‘I think I’ve cotterite’, and we took it into the kitchen and I cleaned it with washing-up liquid and I knew he was right,” she said.

A follow-up visit to the Natural History Museum confirmed that Ben, who is already planning on a career as a geologist, had found cotterite. He was presented with a special certificate recognising his find by Dr Bertie Higgs, a retired senior geology lecturer at University College Cork and chairperson of the Cork Geological Society and Dr Patrick Roycroft, the geology curator at the National Museum of Ireland

The certificate, which was presented to Ben at an event in UCC, states that his find will forevermore be known as ‘The Ben O’Driscoll Cotterite’.