Trends in the discovery of new minerals over the last century

Abstract

Patterns in the discovery and description of new minerals over the last century emerge from a new database of 4,046 mineral discovery reports (roughly ¾ of all known minerals). The number of new minerals discovered per year was steady over time from 1917 to the early 1950s, when it began a rapid increase punctuated by spikes in 1962-1969, 1978-1982, and 2008-2016, the last of which is probably still ongoing. A detailed breakdown of the technological, geographic, institutional, and other characteristics of mineral discovery in this dataset elucidates factors leading to increases in mineral discovery. (1) The availability of instrumentation for a particular analytical technique has

Molecular assembly indices of mineral heteropolyanions: some abiotic molecules are as complex as large biomolecules

“… Hystad and colleagues [ 38 ] have demonstrated that more than 3000 additional mineral species on Earth exist, but have yet to be discovered and described. New mineral species are being discovered at a rate of approximately 100 species per year [ 39 ], and many of those display complex, previously unknown structures [ 34 , 40 ]. …”

Open-ended versus bounded evolution: Mineral evolution as a case study

“…With more than 6,000 different mineral species approved by the IMA-CNMNC and 100 new species discovered yearly ( 46 ), it might seem that Earth's mineral kingdom is remarkably well endowed. However, that view misses a key property of evolving systems: As with all other evolving systems, the known mineral kingdom represents only a miniscule fraction of all conceivable configurations—by our rough estimation fewer than one stable mineral occurs in every 10 42 possible element combinations.…”

Oldsite, K2Fe2+[(UO2)(SO4)2]2(H2O)8, a new uranyl sulfate mineral from Utah, USA: its description and implications for the formation and occurrences of uranyl sulfate minerals

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