Image: Holly Lindem
In Brief
- Only a dozen minerals (crystalline compounds) are known to have existed among the ingredients that formed the solar system 4.6 billion years ago, but today Earth has more than 4,400 mineral species.
- Earth’s diverse mineralogy developed over the eons, as new mineral-generating processes came into play.
- Remarkably, more than half of the mineral species on Earth owe their existence to life, which began transforming the planet’s geology more than two billion years ago.
Once upon a time there were no minerals anywhere in the cosmos. No solids of any kind could have formed, much less survived, in the superheated maelstrom following the big bang. It took half a million years before the first atoms—hydrogen, helium and a bit of lithium—emerged from the cauldron of creation. Millions more years passed while gravity coaxed these primordial gases into the first nebulas and then collapsed the nebulas into the first hot, dense, incandescent stars.
Only then, when some giant stars exploded to become the first supernovas, were all the other chemical elements synthesized and blasted into space. Only then, in the expanding, cooling gaseous stellar envelopes, could the first solid pieces of minerals have formed. But even then, most of the elements and their compounds were too rare and dispersed, or too volatile, to exist as anything but sporadic atoms and molecules among the newly minted gas and dust. By not forming crystals, with distinct chemical compositions and atoms organized in an orderly array of repeating units, such disordered material fails to qualify as minerals.
This article was originally published with the title Evolution of Minerals.
Already a Digital subscriber? Sign-in Now
If your institution has site license access, enter here.
See what we're tweeting about
4 Comments
Add CommentOne of the points missed in this summary, is, minerals evolved to a degree *before* life. So there is a question, what kinds of evolution are there? Involution and Envolution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEarth's minerology is truly spectacular, as anyone who takes a trip to the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History or other museum of natural history can observe. It is most interesting that more than half of the mineral species on Earth owe their existence to life - which emerged on Earth 3.9 billion years ago. Wonderful piece. Query, Is the emergence of mineral species just more 'natural selection,' or is something else the causative mechanism for the radiation of pre-biotic and post-biotic-Earth mineral species?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes John Umana : Selection does exist for minerals. Geothermal heat leeches mineral solutions from encasing rocks. These fluids rise up through fissure systems until they reach temperatures and pressures low enough to add new layers to mineral ore crystals. There are tens of thousands of such systems all over the World, each within different rock chemistries and with varying mineral fluids, selecting which groups of minerals could crystalise where.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBacteria are known to occur in undersea volcanic vents, and the vast range of structured ore types might help to explain why life first appeared in such places.
So far, every Mars lander has not imaged a single faceted crystal even after there have been hundreds of thousands of pictures. Earth is indeed the Crystal Planet. Oh by the way, Earth is the Crystal Planet, the Water Planet, the Evolution Planet, the Life Planet, the Species' Planet . . . We will probably never find an Avatar-like species forest on Mars or any other planet in this solar system. Earth is indeed unique.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this