It looks like a tiny brick.

[idahogoldhunter]

Found this thing while gold panning. Was heavier than 90% of material. Looks like a pellet or a mineral to me.

 

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[DDancer]

Appears to be a pyrite crystal nice to find them like that.

 

[idahogoldhunter]

Really? Pyrite? This specimen is reddish brown and while its a prism its not a cube, which pyrite conforms to from my understanding. Any explanation?

 

[Eu_citzen]

Zircon, perhaps. They usually feel very heavy and react with a blacklight. Pretty hard, to. Try scratching it with a quartz.

 

[DDancer]

I've found plenty of them while panning. The coloration is due to oxidation of the iron. The picture is just an example of shapes. A lot of gold placer deposites are formed from deteriorated pyritic formations that had/have free gold trapped in their matrix. In fact many lode gold formations have a lot of pyrites and are "roasted" to break down the pyrites then crushed and sorted to liberate the gold.

Its not uncommon to find loose pyrite cubes in streams near sources of gold. Larger crystals tend to be broken up by stream activity. Little ones like that tend to survive longer.