WorldWide Drilling Resource

9 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® NOVEMBER 2019 New Mineral with a Strange Chemical Signature Discovered in a Diamond Nicole Meyer, a University of Alberta (Canada) student, discovered a new mineral inside a diamond. Named goldschmidtite in honor of the founder of modern geochemistry Victor Moritz Goldschmidt, it has a curious chemical signature for a mineral from the earth’s mantle. “Goldschmidtite has high concentrations of niobium, potassium, and the rare earth elements lanthanum and cerium, whereas the rest of the mantle is dominated by other elements, such as magnesium and iron,” explained Meyer, a graduate student in the Diamond Exploration Research and Training School, part of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada’s Collaborative Research and Training Experience. “For potassium and niobium to constitute a major proportion of this mineral, it must have formed under exceptional processes that concentrated these unusual elements.” Because it’s so difficult to access the mantle, scientists rely on tiny mineral inclusions within diamonds to learn more about the chemistry deep beneath the earth’s surface. Meyers said the work to find the new mineral wasn’t hers alone; it was an interdisciplinary collaboration with a mineralogist, crystallographer, and her advisors. “This discovery is the result of a lot of patient and meticulous work by Nicole and the research team,” said Graham Pearson, Meyer’s co-supervisor. “Goldschmidtite is highly unusual for an inclusion captured by diamond, and gives us a snapshot of fluid processes that affect the deep roots of continents during diamond formation. There have been several attempts to name new minerals after Goldschmidt, but previous ones have been discredited. This one is here to stay.” Image courtesy Nicole Meyer.