More than 80% of Earth’s 10,500+ minerals were mediated by water, and this is why other planets have fewer minerals

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80% of the min­er­als on earth were medi­at­ed through water

“For exam­ple, more than 80% of the earth­’s min­er­als have been medi­at­ed by water, which is there­fore fun­da­men­tal to the min­er­al diver­si­ty on this plan­et. This explains, in a broad­er sense, one of the main rea­sons why the Moon and Mer­cury and even Mars have far few­er min­er­al species than Earth.”

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“The work also tells us some­thing very pro­found about the role of biol­o­gy,” he adds. “A third of the min­er­als on earth could not have formed with­out biol­o­gy — shell­fish and bones and teeth, for exam­ple, or microbes, for exam­ple, or biol­o­gy’s vital indi­rect role, such as cre­at­ing an oxy­gen-rich atmos­phere, which would have result­ed in 2,000 min­er­als not form­ing otherwise.” .”

“Each min­er­al spec­i­men has a sto­ry. Each tells a sto­ry. Each is a time cap­sule reveal­ing Earth­’s past in a way noth­ing else can.”

40% of the min­er­al species on earth arose in more than one way

Accord­ing to the paper, nature cre­at­ed 40% of Earth­’s min­er­al species in more than one way — both abi­ot­ic and cel­lu­lar, for exam­ple — and in sev­er­al cas­es used more than 15 dif­fer­ent recipes to pro­duce the same crys­tal struc­ture and chem­i­cal composition.

Of the 5,659 rec­og­nized min­er­al species stud­ied by Hazen and col­leagues, nine were formed by 15 or more dif­fer­ent phys­i­cal, chem­i­cal, and/or bio­log­i­cal processes—everything from near-instan­ta­neous for­ma­tion by light­ning or mete­orite impacts to changes caused by water. Rock inter­ac­tions or trans­for­ma­tions at high pres­sures and tem­per­a­tures over hun­dreds of mil­lions of years.

And as if to show that it has a sense of humor, over the past 4.5 bil­lion years, nature has tak­en 21 dif­fer­ent routes to cre­ate pyrite (aka fool’s gold) — the world’s cham­pi­on of min­er­als of diverse ori­gin. Pyrite forms at high and low tem­per­a­tures, with and with­out water, with the help of microbes, and in harsh envi­ron­ments where life is irrelevant.

Pyrite is com­posed of one part iron and two parts sul­fide (FeS2) and is mined and released via mete­orites, vol­ca­noes, hydrother­mal deposits, by pres­sure between rock stra­ta, near-sur­face rock weath­er­ing, micro­bial­ly pre­cip­i­tat­ed deposits, sev­er­al min­ing-relat­ed process­es, coal mine fires, and many oth­er means.

To reach their con­clu­sions, Hazen and Mor­ri­son cre­at­ed a data­base of all known for­ma­tion process­es of all known min­er­als. They drew on large, open-access min­er­al data­bas­es (mindat.org and rruff.ima/info), sup­ple­ment­ed by thou­sands of pri­ma­ry research arti­cles on the geol­o­gy of min­er­al deposits around the world, and iden­ti­fied 10,556 dis­tinct com­bi­na­tions of min­er­als and for­ma­tions. detailed in the arti­cle “On the Par­a­ge­net­ic Modes of Min­er­als: A Min­er­al Evo­lu­tion­ary Perspective”.

The goal of their efforts: “To under­stand how the diver­si­ty and dis­tri­b­u­tion of min­er­als have changed over time and to pro­pose a sys­tem for min­er­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion that reflects the ori­gin of min­er­als in the con­text of evolv­ing ter­res­tri­al worlds.”

Dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing min­er­als based on how and when each species appeared in the Earth­’s 4.5 bil­lion+ year history

In pre­vi­ous stud­ies span­ning more than a cen­tu­ry, thou­sands of min­er­al­o­gists world­wide have painstak­ing­ly doc­u­ment­ed near­ly 6,000 dif­fer­ent “min­er­al types” based on their unique com­bi­na­tions of chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion and crys­tal struc­ture. dr Hazen and col­leagues took a dif­fer­ent approach, empha­siz­ing how and when each type of min­er­al appeared over more than 4.5 bil­lion years of Earth­’s history.

“No one has tak­en on this daunt­ing task before,” says Dr. Hazen, who was hon­ored by the IMA with the Medal 2021 for his out­stand­ing achieve­ments in min­er­al crys­tal chem­istry, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the field of min­er­al evolution.

“In these twin papers, we are doing our best to lay the foun­da­tion for a new approach to detect­ing dif­fer­ent types of min­er­als. We wel­come the find­ings, addi­tions and future releas­es from the min­er­alog­i­cal community.”