Minerals are physical objects, rooted in time and formed through complex planetary processes. So why don’t scientists classify them that way? A philosopher and two Earth scientists recently asked that ...

Swedish physician, botanist and zoologist Carl von Linné is today famous as the father of binomial nomenclature, a system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts ...

A system of categorization that reflects not just a mineral's chemistry and crystalline structure, but also the physical, chemical, or biological processes by which it formed, would be capable of ...

Quartz, diamond, calcite, and pyrite are a few of the most famous mineral “species,” according to traditional systems of classification. Yet, two papers published in American Mineralogist have ...

As global mining expands to meet growing material demand, the world faces an urgent question: where will the next generation of resources come from? A new study led by Dr. Guochang Xu and Prof.

Minerals are geologic time capsules of the environments in which they form. With the right approach, their mysteries can be cracked open to reveal key features of the ancient Earth or other planets.