Human industry and ingenuity has done more to diversify and distribute minerals on Earth than any development since the rise of oxygen over 2.2 billion years ago. The work bolsters the scientific argument to officially designate a new geological time interval distinguished by the pervasive impact of human activities called the Anthropocene Epoch.
In the paper, published by American Mineralogist, a team led by Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institution for Science identifies for the first time a group of 208 mineral species that originated either principally or exclusively due to human activities. That is almost 4% of the roughly 5,200 minerals officially recognized by the International Mineralogical Association (IMA).
Most of the recognized minerals attributed to human activities originated through mining-waste dumps, through the weathering of slag, formed in tunnel walls, mine water or timbers, or through mine fires. Six were found on the walls of smelters, three formed in a geothermal piping system.
Some minerals formed due to human actions can also occur naturally. Three in that category were discovered on corroded lead artifacts aboard a Tunisian shipwreck, two on bronze artifacts in Egypt, and two on tin artifacts in Canada. Four were discovered at prehistoric sacrificial burning sites in the Austrian mountains.
According to the paper, the first great punctuation event in the history of Earth mineral diversity occurred more than 2 billion years ago when the increase of oxygen in the atmosphere, called the Great Oxidation, gave rise to as many as two-thirds of the more than 5,200 mineral species officially recognized today.
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