Number of minerals of various chemical elements: Statistics 2012 (a new approach to an old problem)

Abstract

A list of all mineral species (4809) approved by IMA to 2012 inclusive has been compiled. The crystal chemical formulae of these minerals has been reviewed; each mineral species is marked by a set of the n-component chemical system (where n = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). The leading chemical elements by number of mineral species in the Earth’s crust are as follows (number of mineral species is in parentheses): oxygen (3929), hydrogen (2700), silicon (1420), calcium (1130), sulfur (978), aluminum (959), iron (920), sodium (850), copper (588), phosphorus (559), magnesium (547), and arsenic (536). The taxonomy of mineral species is discussed. The important advantage of the proposed systematics is the possibility to range mineral species in strict order, in which each of them would have a unique position. A simple way of ordering minerals opens up possibilities for computer indexing of thermodynamic information. Within each system, minerals are arranged in order of the number of atoms of the first element and, within the group of compounds with the same number of atoms of the first element, in order of the number of atoms of the second element, and so on.