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LITHOEN

Knowledge base

Entities

Every entry is a structured record: a reviewed summary, claims with evidence and epistemic status, and typed relationships into the rest of the graph.

Chemical elements

  • Aluminium

    A major crustal element that can substitute for silicon in tetrahedral sites and also occupy larger octahedral ones — a dual role that makes it central to feldspars, micas and clays.

  • Calcium

    A major element of plagioclase feldspar, pyroxene and carbonate minerals, and the element whose partitioning drives much of the compositional variation in igneous rocks.

  • Carbon

    The element of carbonate minerals and of organic matter, and the pivot of exchange between rock, ocean and atmosphere.

  • Cerium

    The most abundant rare-earth element, and unusual among them for adopting a tetravalent state as well as the trivalent one.

  • Chromium

    A trace element strongly compatible in mantle minerals, and therefore retained in the residue when the mantle melts.

  • Cobalt

    The element of atomic number 27. In the deposits Lithoen holds it is almost never the reason a body is worked: it travels with nickel in laterite and magmatic sulfide systems and with copper in some sediment-hosted systems.

  • Copper

    A trace element with a strong affinity for sulfide, and therefore a standing example of chalcophile behaviour.

  • Gold

    A siderophile and chalcophile element, transported in hydrothermal fluids as chloride and bisulfide complexes and recovered from a wider range of deposit classes than any other metal.

  • Hydrogen

    Present in rocks chiefly as hydroxyl and water, whose presence lowers melting temperatures and changes how minerals deform.

  • Iron

    The dominant element of Earth’s core and a major constituent of mantle and crustal minerals. Its two common oxidation states make it the principal recorder of redox conditions in rocks.

  • Lanthanum

    The first of the lanthanides and the lightest rare-earth element.

  • Lead

    The daughter of uranium and thorium decay, and therefore the element whose isotopic composition records the age of the material containing it.

  • Lutetium

    The last and smallest of the lanthanides, and the end point of the lanthanide contraction.

  • Magnesium

    A major element of the mantle, and the lighter partner in the iron–magnesium substitutions that run through olivine, pyroxene and mica.

  • Manganese

    A minor element with several oxidation states, which makes its solubility and mineral host strongly redox-dependent.

  • Molybdenum

    A trace element recovered principally from porphyry copper systems, where it is the second metal of the copper-molybdenum class.

  • Neodymium

    A light rare-earth element whose isotopic composition is used to trace the evolution of mantle and crustal reservoirs.

  • Nickel

    A trace element that partitions strongly into olivine and into metallic phases — behaviour that links it both to mantle rocks and to Earth’s core.

  • Oxygen

    The most abundant element in the Earth’s crust and mantle by atom count, and the framework of nearly every rock-forming mineral. Silicate structures are built of oxygen; everything else occupies the spaces between.

  • Phosphorus

    A minor element concentrated almost entirely in phosphate minerals, which in turn concentrate many trace elements.

  • Potassium

    A major element of alkali feldspar and mica whose long-lived radioactive isotope makes it simultaneously a rock-forming element and a heat source.

  • Silicon

    The element that, with oxygen, defines the silicate minerals. Its tetrahedral coordination by four oxygens is the single structural motif from which most of the solid Earth is assembled.

  • Silver

    A chalcophile element recovered mainly with copper, lead and zinc rather than on its own, which is why both USGS deposit databases record a silver grade alongside the principal metals.

  • Sodium

    A major element of alkali and plagioclase feldspars, readily mobilised by fluids and among the first elements lost during chemical weathering.

  • Sulfur

    The element that makes sulfide minerals possible, and therefore the principal carrier of chalcophile metals.

  • Titanium

    A minor element that concentrates in its own oxide and silicate phases, and a common host for other elements too large to enter the main rock-forming minerals.

  • Uranium

    A radioactive trace element whose decay both heats the Earth and provides its most precise clocks.

  • Yttrium

    Not a lanthanide, but grouped with the rare-earth elements because its charge and ionic radius make it behave like one.

  • Zinc

    A chalcophile element and the principal metal of the sediment-hosted and volcanogenic massive sulfide classes, carried in hydrothermal fluids as a chloride complex and deposited chiefly as sphalerite.

  • Zirconium

    A trace element that concentrates in zircon, a mineral robust enough to survive weathering, transport and metamorphism and to carry a datable record through all of them.

Datasets

  • International Chronostratigraphic Chart

    The standard reference chart of the geological time scale, maintained and periodically revised by the International Commission on Stratigraphy; Lithoen cites specific dated versions.

  • World Magnetic Model

    A mathematical model of Earth’s main magnetic field, issued for a five-year epoch and revised as the field changes. It is a worked example of a model that is authoritative precisely because it is explicitly a model with a stated validity window.

Deposits

  • Aitik

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Sweden. Its reported host rocks are Biotite schist, amphibolite. Minerals reported present include chalcopyrite, pyrite, magnetite, pyrrhoyite, barite, calcite, fluorite, scapolite.

  • Ashele

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Xinjiang, China. The compilation classifies it as a bimodal-mafic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are chert, felsic tuff, reef limestone, spilite, spilitic tuff, tuff breccia. Minerals reported present include argentite, arsenopyrite, azurite, malachite, barite, bornite, carbonate, chalcocite.

  • Beatson

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Alaska, United States. The compilation classifies it as a mafic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are black slate, chlorite schist. Minerals reported present include ankerite, apatite, arsenopyrite, barite, bismuthinite, brannerite, cassiterite, chalcopyrite.

  • Bhimatangar

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Orissa, India. The compilation classifies it as the Fe oxide subtype. Minerals reported present include chlorite, hematite, goethite, kaolinite, limonite, nepouite, sepiolite, serpentinite.

  • Bingham Canyon

    A porphyry copper deposit in Utah, discovered in 1863 and used by the USGS porphyry copper model as one of its named global examples. The USGS database records it as a porphyry copper deposit of Cox and Singer model 17, about 37 million years old.

  • Bjurliden

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Sweden. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are andesite, keratophyre tuff. Minerals reported present include arsenopyrite, biotite, bismuth, bornite, boulangerite, bournonite, chalcopyrite, chlorite.

  • Bulong

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Western Australia, Australia. The compilation classifies it as the Mg hydrous silicate subtype. Minerals reported present include asbolane, goethite, hematite, kaolinite, limonite, maghemite, nontronite, Mn-oxides.

  • Buruktal

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Orenburg, Russia. The compilation classifies it as the Mg hydrous silicate subtype. Minerals reported present include antigorite, chlorite, chrysotile, garnierite, goethite, halloysite, hematite, illite-smectite.

  • Çalda?

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Turkey. The compilation classifies it as the Fe oxide subtype. Minerals reported present include asbolane, chlorite, garnierite, goethite, hematite, illite, limonite, montmorillonite.

  • Caleta Coloso

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Chile. The compilation classifies it as a redbed copper deposit. Its reported host rocks are Conglomerate, sandstone. Minerals reported present include chalcocite, covellite, bornite, chalcopyrite, atacamite, hematite, albite, analcite.

  • Cawse

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Western Australia, Australia. The compilation classifies it as the Fe oxide subtype. Minerals reported present include chlorite, goethite, hematite, kaolinite, limonite, lizardite, Mn-oxides, nontronite.

  • Cerro Matoso

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Córdoba, Colombia. The compilation classifies it as the clay silicate subtype. Minerals reported present include chamosite, gibbsite, goethite, kaolinite, limonite, maghemite, pimelite, sepiolite.

  • Chuquicamata

    A porphyry copper-molybdenum deposit in northern Chile, discovered in 1911. The USGS database merges Chuqui Norte, Exotica and other named bodies into this record under its two-kilometre rule, so the object it names is larger than any one pit.

  • Cínovec–Zinnwald

    A tin–tungsten–lithium greisen deposit straddling the Czech–German border in the Erzgebirge/Krušné hory, named Cínovec on the Czech side and Zinnwald on the Saxon side. Its greisen bodies carry zinnwaldite, a lithium-rich mica reaching about 5 millimetres in grain size, alongside quartz and topaz with minor cassiterite, wolframite and fluorspar.

  • Corocoro

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Bolivia. The compilation classifies it as a redbed copper deposit. Its reported host rocks are Red sandstone and mudstone. Minerals reported present include chalcocite, native copper, domeykite, native silver, gypsum, anhydrite, barite, aragonite.

  • Dzhezkazgan

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Kazakstan. The compilation classifies it as a Revett-type copper deposit. Its reported host rocks are Sandstone, siltstone, conglomerate. Minerals reported present include chalcocite, bornite, chalcopyrite, galena sphalerite, native silver, calcite, barite.

  • El Teniente

    A porphyry copper-molybdenum deposit in the central Chilean Andes, known since 1706 and among the largest bodies of porphyry-style mineralisation recorded anywhere.

  • Ellamar

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Alaska, United States. The compilation classifies it as a mafic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are argillite, graywacke. Minerals reported present include apatite, arsenopyrite, barite, bismuthinite, brannerite, cassiterite, chalcopyrite, chlorite.

  • Escondida

    A porphyry copper-gold deposit in the Atacama of northern Chile, discovered in 1981 beneath cover — one of the last very large porphyry systems found at surface-blind depth in that belt.

  • Estaçao

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Beja, Portugal. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are jasper, rhyolite tuff. Minerals reported present include aikinite, alloclasite, arsenopyrite, berthierite, betekhtinite, bismuth, bismuthinite, boulangerite.

  • Gacun

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Sichuan, China. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are chert, dacite, dolomitic limestone, rhyodacite, rhyolite, rhyolitic tuff. Minerals reported present include albite, anglesite, argentite, arsenopyrite, azurite, malachite, Ba-adularia, balkanite.

  • Goro

    A nickel-cobalt laterite in southern New Caledonia, developed on an obducted ophiolite sheet. The USGS laterite model records nickel and cobalt concentrations by layer through its profile.

  • Grasberg

    A porphyry copper-gold deposit in the highlands of Papua, Indonesia, discovered in 1988 and merged in the USGS database with Ertsberg and other named bodies. Its position is recorded only to the nearest minute of arc.

  • Greenvale

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Queensland, Australia. The compilation classifies it as the Fe oxide subtype. Its recorded status is "past production 1974–1992; additional exploration".

  • Jinchuan

    A magmatic nickel-copper sulfide deposit in an ultramafic intrusion of the Sino-Korean craton, Gansu Province, China, discovered in 1958 and dated at 831.8 ± 0.6 million years.

  • Kabanga

    A magmatic nickel sulfide deposit in the Kibaran orogenic belt of Tanzania, discovered in 1975 and the highest-grade nickel deposit in the USGS model’s example table.

  • Kennecott

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Alaska, United States. Its reported host rocks are Stromatolitic limestone, dolomite, microbial mats.. Minerals reported present include chalcocite, djurleite, covellite, bornite, chalcopyrite, digenite, anilite, luzonite.

  • Khandiza

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Uzbekistan. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are andesite, andesitic dacite, chert, conglomerate, dolomite, rhyodacite. Minerals reported present include ankerite, argentite, arsenopyrite, bornite, bournonite, chalcopyrite, chlorite, dolomite.

  • Kipushi

    A carbonate-hosted zinc-copper deposit in Haut-Katanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo, unusual enough that the USGS sediment-hosted classification names a whole class after it.

  • Konrad

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Poland. The compilation classifies it as a reduced-facies copper deposit. Its reported host rocks are Shale, siltstone. Minerals reported present include chalcocite, covellite, bornite, chalcopyrite, galena, sphalerite, hematite.

  • Korsnäs

    A lead and rare-earth deposit in westernmost Finland, described by the Geological Survey of Finland as unique: hosted by a large north-trending calcite-diopside-barite-fluorite-allanite vein, or a carbonatite dyke, cutting Svecofennian mica gneisses. Mined between 1959 and 1972 for lead, with allanite and other rare-earth minerals making it prospective for rare earths as well.

  • Kosaka (Uchinotai-Uwamuki)

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Akita, Japan. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are ferruginous chert, rhyolite tuff breccia. Minerals reported present include apatite, argentite, azurite, barite, bornite, boulangerite, bournonite, carrollite.

  • Krásno–Horní Slavkov (Hub stock)

    A tin-tungsten deposit in the Krásno–Horní Slavkov ore district of the Czech Krušné hory, in which the mineralisation is bound to greisens developed in the apical part of a topaz-granite stock. The Li-mica of those greisens is zinnwaldite, the tin mineral is cassiterite of near-ideal composition, and the tungsten mineral is a manganoan ferberite.

  • Las Vigas

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Chihuahua, Mexico. The compilation classifies it as a redbed copper deposit. Its reported host rocks are Sandstone, shale, limestone. Minerals reported present include chalcopyrite, bornite, chalcocite, covellite, pyrite, marcasite, sphalerite, barite.

  • Lubin

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Poland. The compilation classifies it as a reduced-facies copper deposit. Its reported host rocks are Shale, siltstone, sandstone. Minerals reported present include chalcocite, covellite, bornite, chalcopyrite, galena, sphalerite, hematite.

  • Madneuli

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Georgia. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are rhyodacite subvolcanic, rhyodacitic tuff, rhyolitic tuff, tuffite. Minerals reported present include albite, alunite, anhydrite, apatite, argyrodite, barite, biotite, bismuthinite.

  • Maleevskoe

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at East Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are basalt porphyry subvolcanic, calcareous shale, calcareous siltstone, rhyodacite porphyry subvolcanic, rhyolite porphyry eruptive breccia, rhyolite porphyry subvolcanic. Minerals reported present include acanthite, aikinite, albite, alloclasite, andalusite, arsenopyrite, Ba-muscovite, barite.

  • Marlborough

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Queensland, Australia. The compilation classifies it as the clay silicate subtype. Its recorded status is "exploration, feasibility study".

  • Moa

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Holguín, Cuba. The compilation classifies it as the Fe oxide subtype. Minerals reported present include asbolane, gibbsite, goethite, hematite, limonite, montmorillonite, nontronite, serpentine.

  • Murrin Murrin

    A nickel-cobalt laterite in the Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia, which the USGS laterite model calls a classic clay-ore deposit of that class — and notes has no garnierite, which it attributes to a fully serpentinised protolith and poor drainage.

  • Navan

    A carbonate-hosted zinc-lead deposit in County Meath, Ireland, named by the USGS Mississippi Valley-type model among its important deposits and classed in the USGS database as carbonate-hosted amagmatic.

  • Neves-Corvo

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Beja, Portugal. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are sandstone, shale, jasper, rhyolite-rhyodacite tuff. Minerals reported present include aikinite, alloclasite, ankerite, arsenopyrite, barite, berthierite, betekhtinite, bismuth.

  • Nicaro

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Oriente (Holguín), Cuba. The compilation classifies it as the Fe oxide subtype. Minerals reported present include garnierite, goethite, hematite, hydrargillite, hydrogoethite, halloysite, nontronite, montmorillonite.

  • Nkamouna

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Cameroon. The compilation classifies it as the Mg hydrous silicate subtype. Minerals reported present include asbolane, ernienickelite, garnierite, gibbsite, goethite, hematite, kaolinite, kerolite.

  • Noril’sk–Talnakh

    Magmatic nickel-copper-PGE sulfide deposits in subvolcanic mafic intrusions of the Siberian Platform, related to the Siberian Traps flood basalts. One of two districts the USGS magmatic sulfide model identifies as dominating world nickel sulfide resources.

  • Novo-Berezovskoe

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at East Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are albitophyre, carbonaceous shale, felsic tuff, limestone, rhyolite porphyry subvolcanic, tuffaceous sandstone. Minerals reported present include actinolite, albite, altaite, ankerite, apatite, argentite, arsenopyrite, azurite.

  • Ora Banda

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Western Australia, Australia. The compilation classifies it as the clay silicate subtype. Its recorded status is "mined out".

  • Otanmäki

    A vanadium-rich magnetite-ilmenite deposit in the Otanmäki V-Ti-Fe area of central Finland, in deformed and metamorphosed gabbros of about 2060 million years. The Geological Survey of Finland reports its main minerals as magnetite and ilmenite in a ratio of about two to one, with vanadium at 0.62 per cent in the magnetite.

  • Oyu Tolgoi

    A porphyry copper-gold deposit in the South Gobi of Mongolia, discovered in 1996 and about 367 million years old — far older than the Cenozoic porphyry deposits of the Andes and the western United States.

  • Ozernoe

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Buryatia, Russia. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are andesitic dacite, andesitic tuff, dacitic tuff, ignimbrite, limestone, phyllite. Minerals reported present include actinolite, albite, anatase, argentite, arsenopyrite, Ba-muscovite, barite, biotite.

  • Pechenga

    Magmatic nickel-copper sulfide deposits in the Baltic Shield of the Kola Peninsula, Russia, discovered in 1912 and dated at 1,977 ± 55 million years.

  • Pine Point

    A carbonate-hosted zinc-lead deposit on the south shore of Great Slave Lake, Northwest Territories, classed by the USGS as carbonate-hosted amagmatic and cited by the USGS Mississippi Valley-type model as a district of that class.

  • Punta Gorda

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Holguín, Cuba. The compilation classifies it as the Fe oxide subtype. Minerals reported present include asbolane, gibbsite, goethite, hematite, limonite, montmorillonite, nontronite, serpentine.

  • Pyke Hill

    A lateritic nickel deposit on the western side of Lake Carey in the Eastern Goldfields of the Yilgarn Block, Western Australia. The Geological Survey of Western Australia places it in the Eucalyptus – Pyke Hill area, a north-striking zone about 35 km long, and reports identified resources of about 12.82 Mt averaging 1.17 per cent nickel from exploration completed by 1973.

  • Ravensthorpe

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Western Australia, Australia. The compilation classifies it as the Fe oxide subtype. Its recorded status is "open-cast mining operations".

  • Red Dog

    A shale-hosted zinc-lead deposit in the western Brooks Range of Alaska. The USGS database classes it as shale-hosted amagmatic and merges four further named bodies into this record.

  • Richelsdorf

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Germany. The compilation classifies it as a reduced-facies copper deposit. Its reported host rocks are Sandstone and slate. Minerals reported present include bornite, chalcocite, chalcopyrite, pyrite, galena, sphalerite, barite.

  • Ridder-Sokol’noe

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at East Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are carbonaceous shale, chert, felsic eruptive breccia, limestone, shale, rhyolitic tuff (350 m). Minerals reported present include actinolite, albite, aleksite, altaite, andalusite, anglesite, argentite, arsenopyrite.

  • Rio Tinto

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Huelva, Spain. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are rhyolite tuff, rhyolite porphyry. Minerals reported present include arsenopyrite, barite, berthierite, bismuth, bismuthinite, bismuthinite, bornite, boulangerite.

  • Rock Creek

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Montana, United States. The compilation classifies it as a Revett-type copper deposit. Its reported host rocks are Quartzite. Minerals reported present include chalcocite, chalcopyrite, bornite, galena, native siver, pyrite, pyrrhotite.

  • Ržanovo

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Macedonia. The compilation classifies it as the Fe oxide subtype. Minerals reported present include clinochlore, hematite, lizardite, maghemite, millerite, riebeckite, sepiolite, talc.

  • San Romeleo

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Mendoza, Argentina. The compilation classifies it as a redbed copper deposit. Its reported host rocks are Feldspathic sandstone, calcareous, gypsiferous, bituminous. Minerals reported present include chalcanthite, malachite, azurite, brochanthite, antlerite, chalcocite, cuprite, bitumen.

  • Serovskoe

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Ekaterinburg, Russia. The compilation classifies it as the Mg hydrous silicate subtype. Minerals reported present include antigorite, chrysotile, hydrochlorite, gibbsite, goethite, hematite, kerolite, maghemite.

  • Soroako

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Sulawesi, Indonesia. The compilation classifies it as the Mg hydrous silicate subtype. Minerals reported present include asbolane, garnierite, gibbsite, hematite, kaolinite, limonite, lithiophorite, goethite.

  • Spar Lake

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Montana, United States. The compilation classifies it as a Revett-type copper deposit. Its reported host rocks are Quartzite. Minerals reported present include chalcopyrite, bornite, pyrite, galena, sphalerite, hematite, barite, chlorite.

  • Tabuaço

    A tungsten skarn deposit in the Central Iberian Zone of northern Portugal, hosted in Cambrian Douro Group metasediments at the northern margin of the Beira-Tabuaço granitic complex. Contact metamorphism of the schisto-calcareous Bateiras Formation produced skarnification and the crystallisation of scheelite, in two facies the study calls the Lower Skarn and the Main Skarn.

  • Talvivaara

    A large, low-grade nickel-zinc-copper-cobalt deposit in black shales of eastern Finland, discovered in 1977. The Geological Survey of Finland reports that the resource was found to be large but of relatively low grade, and that bio-heap leaching was later found to be a suitable method to work it.

  • Tarnyerskoe

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Ekaterinburg, Russia. The compilation classifies it as a bimodal-mafic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are basalt, dacite, dacite porphyry subvolcanic, hornfels, rhyodacite, rhyolite (1500 m). Minerals reported present include actinolite, altaite, andalusite, anthophyllite, arsenopyrite, biotite, bornite, breithauptite.

  • Tashiro

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Fukushima, Japan. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are rhyolite lapilli tuff, rhyolite flow. Minerals reported present include acanthite, adularia, aikinite, anhydrite, barite, bismuthinite, bornite, chalcocite.

  • Tellnes

    A titanium deposit in the Rogaland Anorthosite Province of southwestern Norway, described by the Geological Survey of Finland's Fennoscandian metallogeny volume as a Ti-rich noritic ore body almost 3 km long and more than 400 m wide. Its average modal composition is reported as 53 volume per cent plagioclase, 29 volume per cent hemo-ilmenite and 10 volume per cent orthopyroxene.

  • Vihanti

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Oulu, Finland. The compilation classifies it as a bimodal-mafic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are quartz-feldspathic schist, black schist, cordierite gneiss, dolomite, skarn. Minerals reported present include antimony, arsenopyrite, barite, berthierite, bismuth, boulangerite, bournonite, breithauptite.

  • Voisey’s Bay

    A magmatic nickel-copper-cobalt sulfide deposit in the Torngat orogen of Labrador, Canada, discovered in 1993 and dated by the USGS model at 1,333 ± 1 million years.

  • Vuonos

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at North Karelia, Finland. The compilation classifies it as a mafic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are quartzite, mica gneiss, black schist, skarn, serpentinite, talc schist. Minerals reported present include almandine, argentian pentlandite, bismuth, cassiterite, chalcopyrite, cobaltiferous pentlandite, cobaltite, cordierite.

  • Whim Creek

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Western Australia, Australia. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are slate (tuffaceous in part), chert. Minerals reported present include alunite, arsenopyrite, atacamite, azurite, barite, bismuthinite, bornite, bournonite.

  • Wingellina

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS Ni-Co laterite database, at Western Australia, Australia. The compilation classifies it as the Fe oxide subtype. Its recorded status is "explored, feasibility study".

  • Witvlei

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS sediment-hosted copper database, at Namibia. The compilation classifies it as a reduced-facies copper deposit. Its reported host rocks are Argillite, greenish gray to dull red, calcareous silty shale. Minerals reported present include chalcocite, bornite, chalcopyrite, covellite, digenite, hematite, calcite, anatase.

  • Xiaorequanzi

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Xinjiang, China. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are albitophyre, andesite, felsic tuff, rhyolite, rhyolite porphyry, trachybasalt. Minerals reported present include albite, altaite, arsenopyrite, azurite, bornite, chalcanthite, chalcocite, chalcopyrite.

  • Yokota (Motoyama-Hama)

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Fukushima, Japan. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are mudstone, rhyolite flow. Minerals reported present include acanthite, adularia, aikinite, anhydrite, barite, bismuthinite, bornite, chalcocite.

  • Zolotushinskoe

    A mineral deposit recorded by the USGS volcanogenic massive sulfide database, at Russia. The compilation classifies it as a felsic volcanic host succession. Its reported host rocks are agglomerate, albitophyre porphyry subvolcanic, chert, diabase, explosive breccia, felsic tuff. Minerals reported present include altaite, antimony, apatite, arsenopyrite, azurite, malachite, barite, biotite.

Earth layers

  • Asthenosphere

    A relatively narrow, mobile zone in the upper mantle beneath the lithosphere, composed of hot material that can soften and flow over geological time. The rigid plates are thought to move over it.

  • Continental crust

    The thicker, less dense crust that makes up the continents. Its buoyancy is why continental lithosphere resists being drawn down at convergent boundaries, and why continental collision builds mountains instead of trenches.

  • Core

    The innermost compositional layer of the Earth: a metallic iron–nickel region, denser than the mantle above it, divided into a liquid outer core and a solid inner core.

  • Crust

    The outermost compositional layer of the Earth: thin, rigid and brittle compared with the layers beneath it, and markedly thinner under the oceans than under the continents.

  • Inner core

    The solid innermost region of Earth’s core. Its solidity is an inference from the behaviour of seismic waves rather than a direct observation, and the reasoning behind that inference has itself been revised.

  • Lithosphere

    The rigid mechanical outer layer of the Earth, formed by the crust together with the cool, rigid uppermost mantle, and broken into the tectonic plates.

  • Mantle

    The dense, hot layer of semi-solid rock between the crust and the core, containing more iron, magnesium and calcium than the crust. Its slow internal motion is central to plate tectonics.

  • Oceanic crust

    The thin, dense crust underlying the ocean basins, generated continuously at mid-ocean ridges and returned to the mantle at subduction zones. It varies little in thickness compared with continental crust.

  • Outer core

    The liquid part of Earth’s metallic core. Its inability to transmit shear waves is the observation from which its liquid state is inferred, and motion within it generates Earth’s main magnetic field.

Faults

  • San Andreas Fault

    A transform fault zone slicing through two thirds of the length of California, connecting divergent boundaries to its north and south; one of the few transform faults exposed on land.

Geochemical reservoirs

  • Average crust

    Earth’s crust treated as a single averaged composition, as crustal abundance compilations use the term. It does not distinguish continental from oceanic crust, and abundance figures quoted against it should not be read as applying to either specifically.

  • Bulk Earth

    The composition of the entire planet, core included. It is not measured; it is estimated from meteorites and from models of how Earth accreted, and it differs sharply from anything that can be sampled.

  • Bulk silicate Earth

    The whole planet MINUS the core: mantle plus crust taken together. The distinction from bulk Earth is not pedantry — the core holds most of Earth’s iron and its siderophile elements, so the two compositions are entirely different.

  • Continental crust (reservoir)

    The continental crust treated as a compositional unit. Distinct from the Phase 1 EarthLayer record, which describes it as a physical layer: this record is what a composition can be attributed to.

  • Core (reservoir)

    Earth’s metallic core treated as a compositional unit. Nothing from it has ever been sampled; its composition is inferred from density, from seismology, and from meteorites.

  • Mantle (reservoir)

    The mantle treated as a compositional unit. It is not uniform, and treating it as one reservoir is a simplification that becomes untenable as soon as isotopic data are considered.

  • Oceanic crust (reservoir)

    The oceanic crust treated as a compositional unit: young, basaltic, and continuously created and destroyed, which makes its composition quite unlike that of the continents.

  • Seawater

    The ocean treated as a geochemical reservoir. Element concentrations in it are governed by solubility and residence time rather than by crustal abundance.

  • Soils of the conterminous United States

    The soil reservoir characterised by the USGS national soil geochemical survey. Named as a reservoir because a soil concentration means nothing without knowing which soils, sampled at what depth, by what protocol.

  • Upper continental crust

    The uppermost part of the continental crust — the part actually exposed to sampling, weathering and erosion. Compositional estimates for it differ substantially from estimates for the crust as a whole, and the two must never be quoted interchangeably.

Geological events

  • Assembly of Pangaea

    The series of collisions through Devonian to Permian time that brought the continents together into Pangaea. The USGS Mississippi Valley-type model connects that interval to about 61 percent of the lead and zinc in dated deposits of that class, through the basinal fluid flow that orogenic loading drives.

  • Breakup of Pangaea

    The dispersal of Pangaea from Triassic through Jurassic time. The Mississippi Valley-type model records that few deposits of that class formed during it — a period of major plate dispersal producing few of the basins and few of the fluid drives that the class requires.

  • Bushveld emplacement

    The emplacement of the Bushveld Complex into the Kaapvaal Craton at about 2.05 billion years ago — a magmatic episode that produced the largest layered intrusion known and most of the world’s chromium.

  • Great Dyke emplacement

    The emplacement of the Great Dyke into the Zimbabwe Craton at about 2.46 billion years ago, along what the USGS chromite model calls the Archean–Proterozoic boundary.

  • Muskox–Mackenzie magmatic event

    A magmatic episode at about 1.27 billion years ago on the northwestern Canadian Shield, comprising the Muskox intrusion, the Mackenzie dyke swarm and the Coppermine River continental flood basalts, which the USGS chromite model treats as coeval and possibly cogenetic.

  • Stillwater emplacement

    The emplacement of the Stillwater Complex in Montana at about 2.7 billion years ago, along the structure now marked by the faulted front of the Beartooth Range in the Wyoming Province.

Geological fluids

  • Basinal brine

    A saline formation water expelled from a sedimentary basin, typically warm rather than hot. It is the transporting medium of systems that operate entirely without igneous heat.

  • Evolved seawater

    Seawater that has been drawn into hot oceanic crust and chemically changed by reacting with it along the flow path. It enters cold, oxidised and sulfate-bearing, and returns hot, reduced and metal-bearing.

  • Hypersaline brine

    A high-salinity aqueous liquid, whether separated from a magmatic fluid as pressure falls or derived by evaporation in a sedimentary basin. Its dissolved chloride is what allows it to carry base metals in quantity.

  • Immiscible sulfide liquid

    A molten sulfide that separates as a distinct liquid from a silicate magma once that magma becomes saturated in sulfur. It is not an aqueous fluid at all, and it concentrates metals by dissolving them out of the silicate melt it separates from.

  • Magmatic-hydrothermal fluid

    An aqueous fluid exsolved from a crystallising magma, carrying water, metals, sulfur and other volatiles away from it. Whether it exists as one supercritical phase or separates into brine and vapour depends on pressure, and that difference changes what it can carry.

  • Meteoric groundwater

    Rainwater circulating through the near-surface and the water table. It is the weakest of the ore-forming fluids and, given enough time and the right climate, one of the most effective.

Geological processes

  • Accretion

    The growth of a planetary body by the accumulation of smaller objects. Earth’s accretion is not directly observable; its timing is constrained by the ages of meteorites, which record the formation of the Solar System.

  • Advanced argillic alteration

    Intense acid alteration that strips a rock of most of its cations, leaving alumina- and silica-rich residues. It records unusually acidic fluid rather than unusually rich fluid.

  • Carbonation

    Reaction of carbon dioxide dissolved in water with minerals, particularly carbonates, which it dissolves. It is the link between the atmosphere and the rock record of carbon.

  • Chemical weathering

    The alteration of minerals by reaction with water, dissolved carbon dioxide and oxygen. It dissolves some elements, oxidises others, and leaves a residue enriched in whatever is least soluble.

  • Continental collision

    Convergence in which two continental plates meet and neither is subducted, because continental crust resists downward motion. The crust instead buckles, shortens and thickens.

  • Continental rifting

    The stretching, faulting and thinning of continental lithosphere, often accompanied by magmatism, which may progress to complete breakup and the formation of a new ocean basin.

  • Cooling

    Loss of heat from a fluid, reducing what it can hold in solution. The simplest depositional mechanism, and the dominant one where a hot fluid meets cold water.

  • Crustal recycling

    The return of lithosphere to the mantle at subduction zones, which balances the creation of new crust at spreading centres and keeps the size of the Earth effectively constant.

  • Crustal shortening

    Horizontal compression that reduces the width of a region of crust and increases its thickness, expressed at the surface as folding and thrust faulting.

  • Crystal accumulation

    The gathering of crystals that have separated from a magma into layers or masses. It is the concentrating mechanism of magmatic systems that produce no fluid at all.

  • Deposition

    The laying down of transported sediment where the carrying medium loses the energy to move it — or, for dissolved material, through evaporation and organic activity.

  • Dolomitisation

    Replacement of limestone by dolomite, which increases porosity as it proceeds. In basinal systems it both prepares the pathway and accompanies the mineralisation that uses it.

  • Elastic rebound

    The mechanism of earthquakes: strain accumulates while a fault is locked, and is released suddenly when friction is overcome, the rock springing back and radiating the stored energy as seismic waves.

  • Element partitioning

    The division of an element between coexisting phases — crystal and melt, mineral and fluid. It is the mechanism by which Earth becomes chemically heterogeneous, and it is a property of a cation in a particular site under particular conditions, not a fixed label on an element.

  • Erosion

    The movement of rock fragments away from where they were produced, by gravity, wind, rain, rivers, oceans and glaciers. Erosion transports; weathering merely breaks down.

  • Erosional removal

    The destruction of mineralisation by exhumation and erosion. A system that formed successfully and was then stripped away leaves nothing to find, which is why formation and preservation are separate questions.

  • Faulting

    The fracturing of rock and displacement of the blocks on either side. The sense of that displacement — normal, reverse or strike-slip — records the orientation of the stresses that produced it.

  • Fluid mixing

    The meeting of two fluids of different composition. Mixing can force precipitation without any change in temperature or pressure, simply because the combined fluid can no longer hold what each carried separately.

  • Fluid phase separation

    The splitting of a single supercritical fluid into a dense brine and a low-density vapour as pressure falls. The two phases partition metals and sulfur differently, so where separation happens matters to what is deposited.

  • Fractional crystallisation

    Progressive removal of crystals from a cooling magma, so that the remaining liquid drifts away from the composition it started with. Elements excluded from the crystals accumulate in what is left.

  • Geochemical differentiation

    The cumulative effect of partitioning across Earth history: the separation of a once more uniform body into reservoirs of contrasting composition.

  • Hotspot volcanism

    Long-lived volcanism in plate interiors, far from plate boundaries. Its explanation in terms of deep mantle plumes is an active scientific argument rather than settled fact.

  • Hydrolysis

    The reaction in which slightly acidic water breaks down silicate minerals, removing soluble cations and leaving clay. It is the principal chemical weathering reaction of the crust.

  • Hydrothermal alteration

    Chemical change of rock by hot aqueous fluid. Fluids dissolve elements at one place and precipitate them at another, which is how elements are transported and concentrated without melting anything.

  • Hydrothermal convection

    Circulation of water through hot rock, driven by a heat source. It is the engine that lets a system process a volume of rock far larger than the volume it eventually mineralises.

  • Intermediate argillic alteration

    Clay-dominated alteration formed at lower temperature and lower acidity than advanced argillic alteration.

  • Leaching

    Removal of components from rock into a passing fluid. It is how a system acquires metals from a source that was never unusually enriched — a large volume weakly stripped can supply a small volume strongly concentrated.

  • Lithification

    The conversion of loose sediment into rock through burial, compaction and cementation as pore water is expelled.

  • Magmatic crystallisation

    The solidification of molten rock into an igneous rock. How fast it happens sets the grain size: slow cooling at depth gives coarse crystals, rapid cooling at the surface gives fine-grained or glassy rock.

  • Mantle convection

    Slow circulation of the solid mantle driven by internal heat, in which hot material rises and cooler, denser material sinks. The geometry of that circulation is far less well constrained than the fact of it.

  • Metamorphism

    The transformation of existing rock by heat, pressure and chemically active fluids, without melting. It rearranges minerals and fabrics; a rock that melts is no longer being metamorphosed.

  • Orogeny

    Mountain building. Not a single mechanism but a family of them: collision, subduction-related uplift, crustal shortening and thrusting, magmatic addition, and extensional fault-block uplift can each raise topography.

  • Overprinting

    The superposition of a later event on an earlier one, so that the rock records both. Reading a mineralised rock means separating what formed it from what happened to it afterwards.

  • Oxidation

    The loss of electrons by an element on exposure to oxygen. In rocks it converts ferrous iron to ferric, which is far less soluble, and fixes it as oxide.

  • Partial melting

    The production of liquid from only part of a solid rock, leaving a residue behind. Almost all magma on Earth is generated this way; the conditions that trigger it differ from setting to setting.

  • Planetary differentiation

    The separation of a planetary body into layers of contrasting composition, dense metal sinking inward and lighter silicate rising, producing Earth’s core, mantle and crust.

  • Plate tectonics

    The unifying framework of the solid-Earth sciences: the lithosphere is broken into plates whose relative motions — divergence, convergence and transform sliding — create, destroy and reshape the crust.

  • Polymorphic transformation

    Rearrangement of the same composition into a different structure as pressure or temperature changes. Polymorphs are the reason a mineral records the conditions of its formation.

  • Potassic alteration

    Alteration that adds potassium phases — potassium feldspar and biotite — to a rock. In porphyry systems it occupies the hot core and is associated with the quartz stockwork veins that carry much of the copper.

  • Propylitic alteration

    A low-intensity assemblage of chlorite, epidote and carbonate that forms in the cool outer parts of a hydrothermal system. It is the most widespread alteration around many systems and, on its own, the least diagnostic.

  • Radiogenic heating

    Heat produced inside the Earth by the decay of long-lived radioactive isotopes, principally uranium, thorium and potassium. It is one of two main sources of Earth’s internal heat, alongside heat left over from formation.

  • Redox processes

    Transfer of electrons between species. Oxidation state governs an element’s charge, its ionic radius, its solubility and which minerals will accept it — so redox controls where elements go.

  • Remobilisation

    The movement of already-concentrated material by a later process — deformation, metamorphism or renewed fluid flow. What is observed today may occupy a site the original system never reached.

  • Residual enrichment

    Concentration by subtraction. Prolonged weathering removes the soluble components of a rock and leaves the insoluble ones behind, so the residue is richer in them than the parent ever was.

  • Seafloor spreading

    The generation of new oceanic crust at mid-ocean ridges and its transport away from the ridge crest, progressively widening the ocean basin between the separating plates.

  • Secular cooling

    The gradual loss of heat retained from Earth’s formation and differentiation. Together with radiogenic heating it supplies the energy that drives the planet’s interior dynamics.

  • Sediment transport

    The carriage of weathered and eroded material by wind, water or ice, during which particles are sorted by size and the largest are dropped first as the transporting medium loses energy.

  • Seismic wave propagation

    The travel of elastic waves through the Earth. Compressional (P) and shear (S) waves behave differently in solids and liquids, and it is that difference which reveals the state of Earth’s interior.

  • Sericitic alteration

    Alteration producing fine-grained white mica, typically with quartz and pyrite. One of the assemblages that can be mapped remotely because of its distinctive infrared absorption.

  • Serpentinisation

    Hydration of olivine and pyroxene in ultramafic rock to serpentine minerals. It changes the rock’s density, strength and chemistry, and it is the state in which much lateritic nickel is held before weathering releases it.

  • Solid solution

    Continuous substitution of one ion for another in a crystal structure. It is why a mineral formula is a description of a range rather than a fixed recipe.

  • Solid-state flow

    Deformation of solid rock by creep over geological timescales. It is the reason the mantle can convect while remaining, almost everywhere, solid — and the reason it is wrong to describe the mantle as a body of liquid rock.

  • Subduction

    The process by which one plate sinks beneath another at a convergent boundary, recycling crust into the mantle and producing the deepest trenches, powerful earthquakes and volcanic arcs.

  • Sulfide saturation

    The point at which a silicate magma can dissolve no more sulfur and an immiscible sulfide liquid separates. Everything chalcophile in the magma then has somewhere better to be.

  • Sulfide segregation

    The physical accumulation of dense immiscible sulfide liquid within or beneath a magma body. Saturation makes the sulfide; segregation is what gathers it.

  • Supergene enrichment

    Redistribution of metal near the surface by descending oxidising water: metal is dissolved from an upper zone and reprecipitated lower down, raising the concentration there above what the original mineralisation held.

  • Volatile exsolution

    The separation of a water-rich fluid from a magma as it crystallises and depressurises. It is the step that turns a magma into a hydrothermal system, and it fractionates water, metals and sulfur out of the melt together.

  • Volcanism

    The transport of magma to the surface and its eruption as lava, tephra and gas. Volcanoes occur at divergent boundaries, above subduction zones and in plate interiors, and these are not the same process.

  • Water–rock reaction

    Chemical exchange between a circulating fluid and the rock it passes through. It changes both: the rock is altered, and the fluid acquires or loses the components it will later deposit.

  • Weathering

    The breakdown of rock in place, by biological, chemical and physical means. It supplies the material that erosion later moves.

Geological regions

  • Alaska–Yukon diffuse deformation zone

    A zone of distributed deformation across interior Alaska and the Yukon, where motion transferred from the southern Alaska margin is spread across many faults.

  • Alps diffuse deformation zone

    PB2002 marks the Alpine region as an orogen: a zone where the rigid-plate model does not describe the motion, because deformation is distributed rather than confined to a boundary. It overlaps the Alps but is not the Alpine orogenic belt, and its outline is a statement about where a plate model stops working.

  • Canadian Shield

    The great exposure of Precambrian basement across northern and central Canada — the surface expression of the cratons beneath, not a separate body from them. The Muskox intrusion, the Mackenzie dyke swarm and the Coppermine River flood basalts lie on its northwestern part.

  • Columbia River Basalt Province

    A continental flood basalt province of the northwestern United States, cited by the USGS magmatic nickel model among the examples of large igneous provinces.

  • Deccan Traps

    A continental flood basalt province of western and central India, cited by the USGS magmatic nickel model among the examples of large igneous provinces.

  • Fennoscandian Shield

    The exposed Precambrian basement of Finland, Sweden, Norway and northwestern Russia. The USGS chromite model places the Burakovsky intrusion on its East Karelian block, described as a prominent suture zone.

  • Gorda–California–Nevada diffuse deformation zone

    A zone of distributed deformation spanning the Gorda plate, the California margin and the Basin and Range, where Pacific–North America motion is shared among many structures rather than taken up on the San Andreas alone.

  • Kaapvaal Craton

    An Archean craton of southern Africa, described by the USGS stratiform chromite model as stable and as the host of the Bushveld Complex. It is the setting of the largest layered intrusion on Earth, which holds most of the world’s chromium.

  • Karoo Igneous Province

    A continental flood basalt province of southern Africa, cited by the USGS magmatic nickel model among the examples of large igneous provinces.

  • Laptev Sea diffuse deformation zone

    A zone of distributed deformation where the Arctic spreading system meets the Siberian margin and the boundary between the Eurasian and North American plates becomes indistinct.

  • Limpopo Belt

    The high-grade belt between the Kaapvaal and Zimbabwe cratons in southern Africa. Lithoen records it because the chromite deposit model places the Bushveld Complex in "the Limpopo province of South Africa", which is a statement about where the intrusion sits relative to two ancient blocks and the belt between them.

  • New Caledonia Ophiolite

    An obducted ophiolite sheet in the southwest Pacific, named by the USGS laterite model among the accreted terranes and obducted ophiolites on which nickel-cobalt laterites have developed. Ophiolite is oceanic lithosphere emplaced onto a continental margin — crust that arrived rather than formed where it now sits.

  • New Hebrides–Fiji diffuse deformation zone

    A zone of distributed deformation in the southwest Pacific where several small plates, arcs and back-arc basins interact and no single boundary carries the motion.

  • Ninetyeast–Sumatra diffuse deformation zone

    A zone of distributed deformation in the northeastern Indian Ocean, where the Indo-Australian plate deforms internally rather than behaving rigidly — one of the clearest cases of intraplate deformation on Earth.

  • North Atlantic Igneous Province

    A volcanic rifted margin province spanning the northern Atlantic, cited by the USGS magmatic nickel model as an example of a large igneous province of that kind rather than a continental flood basalt.

  • Ontong Java Plateau

    An oceanic plateau of the western Pacific, cited by the USGS magmatic nickel model as the representative example of a large igneous province in an oceanic setting.

  • Persia–Tibet–Burma diffuse deformation zone

    The largest orogen in model PB2002, running from the Zagros through Tibet to Burma. Deformation across it is distributed over thousands of kilometres, which is why a rigid-plate description fails there and why Bird’s subduction criteria explicitly exclude the Zagros, Pamirs, Himalaya and Tien Shan.

  • Peru diffuse deformation zone

    A zone of distributed deformation along the Peruvian Andes, where the rigid-plate model does not describe the motion of the overriding crust.

  • Philippines diffuse deformation zone

    A zone of distributed deformation through the Philippine archipelago, where convergence is partitioned across several structures rather than taken up on one boundary.

  • Puna–Sierras Pampeanas diffuse deformation zone

    A zone of distributed deformation in the central Andes, where shortening is spread across the plateau and its foreland rather than taken up on a single boundary.

  • Rivera–Cocos diffuse deformation zone

    A zone of distributed deformation between the Rivera and Cocos plates off western Mexico.

  • Siberian Traps

    A continental flood basalt province of northern Siberia, cited by the USGS magmatic nickel model as an example of a large igneous province. The Noril’sk intrusions, which host the world’s largest magmatic nickel-copper-PGE deposits, belong to its plumbing system.

  • Slave Craton

    An Archean craton of northwestern Canada, shown in the USGS chromite model beneath the Proterozoic cover that hosts the Muskox intrusion, and bounded by the Wopmay orogen.

  • Superior Province

    A large Archean craton of central and eastern Canada, made of granite-greenstone terrains including the Bird River and Sachigo greenstone belts. It is the largest area of Archean crust exposed on Earth.

  • Viburnum Trend

    A belt of carbonate-hosted lead-zinc deposits in southeastern Missouri, in the district the Mississippi Valley-type class is named after. Lithoen records it as a district rather than a deposit: the USGS database holds it as one row while listing separate named orebodies merged into it, and the USGS Mississippi Valley-type model states that districts of this class consist of several to as many as 400 deposits.

  • West-central Atlantic diffuse deformation zone

    A zone in the west-central Atlantic where the model does not resolve motion onto a single boundary.

  • Western Aleutians diffuse deformation zone

    A zone of distributed deformation along the strongly oblique western Aleutian margin.

  • Wyoming Province

    An Archean province of the western United States, described by the USGS chromite model as containing the Beartooth Range as a major block. The Stillwater Complex lies along its faulted front.

  • Yilgarn Craton

    An Archean craton of Western Australia. Its Eastern Goldfields region hosts nickel sulfide deposits associated with komatiite lavas, and its weathering profiles host nickel-cobalt laterites — two entirely different mineral systems on the same ancient crust, separated by billions of years.

  • Zimbabwe Craton

    An Archean craton of southern Africa, host to the Great Dyke, which was emplaced along the Archean–Proterozoic boundary. Adjacent to the Kaapvaal Craton across the Limpopo belt.

Geological structures

  • Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain

    A long trail of volcanic islands and seamounts across the Pacific floor. Its linear form and age progression are the classic observation that hotspot volcanism must be explained.

  • Krafla fissure zone

    A fissure system in northeastern Iceland where rifting has been directly observed and measured — one of the few places where plate divergence can be watched happening on land.

  • Tibetan Plateau

    An immense elevated region north of the Himalaya, thickened and raised by the continuing collision of India with Eurasia. Its average elevation exceeds the summits of most mountains outside the great ranges.

Geological time units

  • Archean

    The eon following the Hadean, whose base is fixed at the age of the oldest well-dated terrestrial rocks. Ancient rocks of this age are found on every continent.

  • Cambrian

    The first period of the Paleozoic and of the Phanerozoic. Its base defines the base of the Phanerozoic Eon.

  • Cenozoic

    The most recent era of the Phanerozoic, beginning 66 million years ago and continuing to the present.

  • Cretaceous

    The last period of the Mesozoic, ending at the boundary that also ends the era.

  • Hadean

    The first eon of Earth history, from the formation of the Solar System to the age of the oldest rocks yet found. Almost no rock record survives from it, which is precisely why its lower boundary is set by meteorites rather than by strata.

  • Holocene

    The current epoch of the geological time scale, spanning roughly the last 11,700 years since the end of the last glacial period.

  • Mesozoic

    The middle era of the Phanerozoic, comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

  • Neogene

    The second period of the Cenozoic, spanning the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, between the Paleogene and the Quaternary.

  • Paleogene

    The first period of the Cenozoic, beginning at the boundary that closes the Mesozoic and comprising the Paleocene, Eocene and Oligocene epochs.

  • Paleozoic

    The first era of the Phanerozoic, beginning with the Cambrian and ending at the largest mass extinction in the rock record.

  • Phanerozoic

    The eon of abundant visible life, from the base of the Cambrian to the present. Its subdivisions are defined by physical reference points in rock, not by numerical ages.

  • Pleistocene

    The epoch preceding the Holocene, spanning most of the Quaternary.

  • Proterozoic

    The long eon preceding the Phanerozoic, spanning roughly two billion years of Earth history.

  • Quaternary

    The current period, beginning 2.58 million years ago; it comprises the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs.

Industrial applications

  • Cutting and wear-resistant tooling

    Cutting and wear-resistant parts made from cemented carbide, which the U.S. Geological Survey reports as taking an estimated 60 per cent of United States tungsten consumption.

  • Optical fibre telecommunication

    Data networking and telecommunication using fibre optic glass, which the U.S. Geological Survey names as the largest United States end use of germanium.

  • Photovoltaic quartz crucible manufacture

    The use of high-purity quartz sand as the raw material for crucibles in which crystalline silicon for photovoltaic cells is grown. The application is named here at material level rather than element level: silicon is not the input, a quartz sand meeting stated impurity limits is.

  • Phthalic anhydride catalyst

    The use of vanadium pentoxide as the catalyst in phthalic anhydride manufacture. Named by the producer on the data sheets for its HIGH PURITY grades and not on the data sheet for its chemically pure grade — which is the issuer saying that this use turns on the grade, not on the compound.

  • Semiconductor and optoelectronic devices

    Integrated circuits and optoelectronic devices — laser diodes, light-emitting diodes, photodetectors and solar cells — which the U.S. Geological Survey reports as the uses of gallium arsenide and gallium nitride.

  • Sulphuric acid catalyst

    The use of vanadium pentoxide as the catalyst in sulphuric acid manufacture. Recorded because the producer of the material names it, on the data sheet for one specific grade — not because vanadium is known to catalyse anything.

Institutions

  • British Geological Survey

    The United Kingdom’s national geological survey and a primary authority for geoscience in Britain; publisher of several sources in the Lithoen registry.

  • International Commission on Stratigraphy

    The body of the International Union of Geological Sciences responsible for standardising the international geological time scale, including the International Chronostratigraphic Chart.

  • NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information

    The United States environmental data archive, which produces and maintains geomagnetic field models used worldwide for navigation and geophysics.

Isotopes

  • Carbon-12

    The dominant stable isotope of carbon and the reference against which carbon isotope ratios are reported.

  • Carbon-13

    The heavier stable isotope of carbon, whose ratio to carbon-12 distinguishes carbon that has passed through biological processes.

  • Hydrogen-2 (deuterium)

    The heavy stable isotope of hydrogen, whose abundance in natural waters varies enough to trace their history.

  • Oxygen-16

    The dominant isotope of oxygen. Ratios between it and the heavier oxygen isotopes shift with temperature and with phase change, which is what makes oxygen isotopes a thermometer.

  • Oxygen-18

    The heavy stable isotope of oxygen whose ratio to oxygen-16 records temperature and process.

  • Potassium-40

    A rare radioactive isotope of potassium that is simultaneously a geological clock and one of the three principal sources of Earth’s radiogenic heat.

  • Silicon-28

    The dominant stable isotope of silicon, making up more than nine tenths of the element in normal materials.

  • Uranium-238

    The most abundant uranium isotope, a long-lived heat source and the parent of a decay chain ending in lead-206.

Material specifications

  • Arcadium Lithium Carbonate, Technical Grade

    A FIRST-PARTY producer specification for lithium carbonate, from the issuer's own controlled document — document number QS-PDS-1051, Revision 05, Date of Last Revision 12 June 2024 — hosted by an authorised distributor after the issuer's own site ceased to serve it. Every figure is a guaranteed limit with a comparator. It constrains NO particle size: its own footnote states that size and density are made to customer requirements. Two of its ten rows print no unit at all, which is recorded rather than filled in.

  • Chinese photovoltaic high-purity quartz sand reference (CN-HPQ-S)

    A national/industry photovoltaic reference for high-purity quartz sand, reported alongside the IOTA producer grades. Every one of its thirteen figures is a ceiling rather than a typical value, which is what makes it a different KIND of document from a producer datasheet. Its limits are not uniformly tighter or looser than the producer grades: it allows aluminium up to 20 mg/kg where IOTA Standard reports 14, and iron up to 0.5 where IOTA Standard reports 0.3.

  • GfE Vanadium Pentoxide ground, high purity grade

    Held because of what it proves. Its five chemical limits are IDENTICAL to the high purity grade and its grade name is the same word. It is nevertheless a different specification, under a different article number and document version, because its physical requirement is different: d(90) below 50 micrometres rather than below 1 millimetre. A grade name plus a chemistry does not identify a specification.

  • GfE Vanadium Pentoxide, chemically pure grade

    A FIRST-PARTY producer specification for vanadium pentoxide, taken from the producer's own data sheet on the producer's own domain. Every figure is a guaranteed limit rather than a typical value — the sheet writes each one with a greater-or-equal or less-or-equal sign — which is what separates it from the Phase 31 quartz grades, where a producer table mixed limits with typical figures. Its effective date is recorded as UNKNOWN because the document states only a month.

  • GfE Vanadium Pentoxide, high purity grade

    The same producer's higher grade of the same compound. It is not simply a tighter version of the chemically pure grade: the producer names DIFFERENT applications for it, so the grade carries a statement about use and not only about purity.

  • IOTA Standard quartz sand grade

    A PRODUCER's product grade for high-purity quartz sand, tabulated element by element. It is recorded as a producer grade and not as a standard, however widely it is used: the review that reports it writes that these grades 'are considered international standards', which describes a market position rather than an issuing authority. Its aluminium figure of 14 mg/kg is the highest of the IOTA grades held here.

  • IOTA-8 quartz sand grade

    The most demanding of the IOTA producer grades held here: more than 99.999 per cent SiO2 with total metallic impurities below 10 mg/kg. Reading it against IOTA Standard is what makes the point that a headline purity is not an impurity profile — its aluminium is 8.0 mg/kg against 14, its iron below 0.05 against 0.3, and its TITANIUM HIGHER, at 1.3 mg/kg against 1.2.

  • SMZ Niobium pentoxide, Марка 1

    A FIRST-PARTY producer grade for niobium pentoxide, taken from the producer's own grade sheet on the producer's own domain. Every impurity figure is a guaranteed ceiling and the Nb2O5 figure a guaranteed floor. Its effective date is recorded as UNKNOWN because the document prints no date at all — the PDF's own file timestamp is a property of the file and is not read as the issuer's date. Stated application: niobium metal, alloys with niobium and Al-Nb and Ni-Nb master alloys of vacuum purity.

  • SMZ Niobium pentoxide, Марка 2

    A FIRST-PARTY producer grade for niobium pentoxide, taken from the producer's own grade sheet on the producer's own domain. Every impurity figure is a guaranteed ceiling and the Nb2O5 figure a guaranteed floor. Its effective date is recorded as UNKNOWN because the document prints no date at all — the PDF's own file timestamp is a property of the file and is not read as the issuer's date. Stated application: niobium metal, alloys with niobium and Al-Nb and Ni-Nb master alloys of vacuum purity.

  • SMZ Niobium pentoxide, Марка 3

    A FIRST-PARTY producer grade for niobium pentoxide, taken from the producer's own grade sheet on the producer's own domain. Every impurity figure is a guaranteed ceiling and the Nb2O5 figure a guaranteed floor. Its effective date is recorded as UNKNOWN because the document prints no date at all — the PDF's own file timestamp is a property of the file and is not read as the issuer's date. Stated application: niobium metal, alloys with niobium and Al-Nb and Ni-Nb master alloys of vacuum purity.

  • SMZ Niobium pentoxide, Марка А

    A FIRST-PARTY producer grade for niobium pentoxide, taken from the producer's own grade sheet on the producer's own domain. Every impurity figure is a guaranteed ceiling and the Nb2O5 figure a guaranteed floor. Its effective date is recorded as UNKNOWN because the document prints no date at all — the PDF's own file timestamp is a property of the file and is not read as the issuer's date. Stated application: optical glass, lithium niobate and other applications.

  • SMZ Niobium pentoxide, Марка В

    A FIRST-PARTY producer grade for niobium pentoxide, taken from the producer's own grade sheet on the producer's own domain. Every impurity figure is a guaranteed ceiling and the Nb2O5 figure a guaranteed floor. Its effective date is recorded as UNKNOWN because the document prints no date at all — the PDF's own file timestamp is a property of the file and is not read as the issuer's date. Stated application: niobium metal, alloys, FeNb and NiNb master alloys of vacuum purity, niobium carbide, niobium-oxide capacitor powders and high-temperature pigments; grade В also optical glass, piezo- and electroceramics, ferrites and semiconductors.

  • SMZ Niobium pentoxide, Марка ПЧ

    A FIRST-PARTY producer grade for niobium pentoxide, taken from the producer's own grade sheet on the producer's own domain. Every impurity figure is a guaranteed ceiling and the Nb2O5 figure a guaranteed floor. Its effective date is recorded as UNKNOWN because the document prints no date at all — the PDF's own file timestamp is a property of the file and is not read as the issuer's date. Stated application: niobium metal, alloys, FeNb and NiNb master alloys of vacuum purity, niobium carbide, niobium-oxide capacitor powders and high-temperature pigments; grade В also optical glass, piezo- and electroceramics, ferrites and semiconductors.

  • SMZ Niobium pentoxide, Марка ТС

    A FIRST-PARTY producer grade for niobium pentoxide, taken from the producer's own grade sheet on the producer's own domain. Every impurity figure is a guaranteed ceiling and the Nb2O5 figure a guaranteed floor. Its effective date is recorded as UNKNOWN because the document prints no date at all — the PDF's own file timestamp is a property of the file and is not read as the issuer's date. Stated application: niobium metal, alloys, FeNb and NiNb master alloys of vacuum purity, niobium carbide, niobium-oxide capacitor powders and high-temperature pigments; grade В also optical glass, piezo- and electroceramics, ferrites and semiconductors.

  • USGS high-purity refined gallium designation

    The U.S. Geological Survey's own product designation separating high-purity refined gallium from low-purity primary gallium, which it reports as different products with different producing countries. It is an authoritative technical designation rather than a numeric standard: this source states no purity figure and no impurity limits for it, and that absence is recorded rather than filled in. Under the Phase 31 specification model it carries an EMPTY requirements list, which is the honest record: it is a product designation with no published numbers, and an empty list says that where a fabricated ceiling would have hidden it.

Materials

  • Ammonium paratungstate

    The tungsten intermediate the U.S. Geological Survey abbreviates as APT, named alongside tungsten oxide as a convertible feed. The survey writes the compound's name and no formula, so none is recorded here.

  • Bauxite

    The aluminium ore from whose processing most of the world's primary gallium is recovered as a byproduct. The U.S. Geological Survey reports the average gallium content of bauxite as 50 parts per million — a concentration at which gallium is never the reason the rock is mined.

  • Bor copper slag

    Smelter slag from the Bor copper operation in eastern Serbia, studied as a flotation feed in its own right. A secondary material: it is a residue of a process rather than a product of the ground, and its copper is what an earlier process failed to take.

  • Bor old flotation tailings

    Historic flotation tailings from the Bor copper operation, added to copper slag in the ball mill as part of the testwork. A secondary material, and in this study a modifier of another feed rather than a feed on its own.

  • Bor slag flotation concentrate

    The copper-bearing concentrate produced in batch flotation of Bor copper slag with old flotation tailings. A bench-scale product: the study reports it from a laboratory batch cell, and it is not a plant product.

  • By-product alloy from New Jersey zinc rectification

    The alloy generated as a by-product of a New Jersey process zinc rectification. It is the stream in which germanium and indium leave the primary zinc circuit, and it was pyrometallurgically drossed to make it suitable for hydrometallurgical processing.

  • Car tyre granulate, Lakenheath line

    Tyre granulate prepared from 100% car tyres on a commercial processing line at Lakenheath in the United Kingdom, as reported by Norris and others 2025. A secondary material: it is an article that reached the end of its service life, size-reduced.

  • Cemented carbide

    The material of cutting and wear-resistant parts, which the U.S. Geological Survey reports as taking an estimated 60 per cent of United States tungsten consumption, primarily in construction, metalworking, mining and oil- and gas-drilling. An advanced material: its performance is a property of the finished part, not of its tungsten content.

  • Cínovec greisenized granite, zinnwaldite-poor

    The greisenized granite of the Cínovec–Zinnwald deposit, as sampled and characterised under the identifier GCW-1: quartz and feldspar dominant with zinnwaldite a smaller component, feldspar altered and partly replaced by clay minerals and carbonates. It is a DIFFERENT rock type from the greisen of the same deposit and the source that characterises both keeps them in separate tables. This corpus did not, until Phase 41 — its measurements had been folded into the greisen entity, which is how one rock's median grain size came to sit beside another rock's maximum.

  • Cínovec gypsum-method condensed leach liquor

    The leach liquor after purification and condensation, immediately before lithium carbonate is precipitated from it. The source reports it as a distinct solution with its own composition, and it is a state of the route rather than a description of the liquor that entered.

  • Cínovec gypsum-method leach liquor

    The aqueous liquor obtained by leaching the sinter in water, and the condensed liquor derived from it after calcium removal. A SOLUTION: everything reported of it is a concentration in a liquid and none of it is a composition of a solid.

  • Cínovec gypsum-method mother liquor

    The solution remaining after lithium carbonate has been precipitated: the OTHER output of the precipitation stage, which the route recorded as producing only the carbonate. The source characterises it and states that its own continuation would address recovering lithium from it, which is the clearest sign that what leaves in this stream is not nothing.

  • Cínovec gypsum-method precipitated lithium carbonate, 96 per cent

    The lithium carbonate precipitated from the condensed leach liquor, BEFORE water washing, reported by the source at 96 per cent Li2CO3. Held as its own material because the source characterises it separately from the washed product and this corpus does not combine two characterizations the source keeps apart.

  • Cínovec gypsum-method water-washed lithium carbonate, 99 per cent

    The final product of the route: the precipitated lithium carbonate after water washing, which the source reports at 99 per cent Li2CO3 and describes in its text as 'almost 99%'. X-ray diffraction identifies the carbonate precipitate as zabuyelite, the mineral form of Li2CO3. A LABORATORY product of one reported study, not a commercial grade.

  • Cínovec zinnwaldite concentrate, 1.40 per cent lithium

    A zinnwaldite concentrate of 1.40 per cent lithium and 0.98 per cent rubidium, prepared from the Cínovec zinnwaldite waste by dry magnetic and grain-size separation and ground to below 0.1 millimetre.

  • Cínovec zinnwaldite waste, 0.21 per cent lithium

    Waste left by the dressing of tin–tungsten ores mined in the past in the Cínovec area of the Czech Republic, containing 0.21 per cent lithium as reported by Jandová and others 2009. A secondary material: it was never mined for its lithium.

  • Cínovec zinnwaldite–calcium sulphate–calcium hydroxide sinter

    The sinter produced by heating the zinnwaldite concentrate with calcium sulphate and calcium hydroxide in the weight ratio 6 : 4.2 : 2 at 950 degrees Celsius. Its diffractogram shows anhydrite, andradite, anorthite, cuspidine, fluorite and a lithium–potassium sulphate.

  • Gallium arsenide wafer

    A compound-semiconductor wafer made from gallium arsenide, which the U.S. Geological Survey reports as being used to manufacture integrated circuits and optoelectronic devices including laser diodes, light-emitting diodes, photodetectors and solar cells. An advanced material: its value rests on meeting device requirements, not on its gallium content.

  • Germanium dioxide

    A refined germanium compound which the U.S. Geological Survey reports as consumed, with germanium tetrachloride, in the manufacture of fibre optic glass. The survey names the compound in words and publishes no formula for it here, so none is recorded.

  • Germanium intermediate leach concentrate

    The form in which a zinc smelter recovers germanium from germanium-bearing zinc concentrate, as reported by the U.S. Geological Survey. An intermediate: germanium has been separated into its own stream but is not yet a refined product.

  • Germanium-bearing zinc concentrate

    A zinc concentrate that carries germanium, which the U.S. Geological Survey reports as the form in which germanium reaches smelters. The germanium rides in a product made for its zinc: nothing about this concentrate is arranged for germanium's benefit, and a zinc concentrate is not germanium-bearing merely by being a zinc concentrate.

  • Germanium-doped fibre optic glass

    Fibre optic glass whose manufacture consumes germanium dioxide and germanium tetrachloride, used for data networking and telecommunication as reported by the U.S. Geological Survey. An advanced material: what matters is the optical behaviour of the finished glass, which germanium content alone does not establish.

  • Germanium–indium acid leach solution

    The solution produced by leaching germanium–indium dross in sulphuric or oxalic acid. Germanium reports to it at yields above 80 per cent in both acids; indium's behaviour differs sharply between them. It is a loaded liquor and nothing more: no germanium was separated from it, precipitated, purified or assayed as a product.

  • Germanium–indium dross

    The dross obtained by thermal oxidation of the New Jersey process by-product alloy, assayed at 28.7 per cent tin, 18.0 lead, 10.6 copper, 8.9 germanium, 8.1 zinc and 2.7 indium. Germanium is present here at a concentration no ore approaches, which is the whole reason byproduct intelligence is process-stream intelligence rather than deposit intelligence.

  • High-purity quartz sand

    Processed quartz sand of the class the sources define as more than 99.99 per cent SiO2, free of visible inclusions and low in lattice-bound aluminium, titanium and iron. A refined mineral product whose usefulness is decided not by its headline purity but by which impurities remain and at what level.

  • High-purity refined gallium

    Gallium refined from low-purity primary metal or from new scrap, which the U.S. Geological Survey designates high-purity and refined and reports separately from primary production, with a different set of producing countries. The designation is the survey's own; that source publishes no numeric purity limit for it.

  • Hydrolysed vanadium precipitate, Tongshan shale route

    The solid precipitated from the vanadium-rich stripping liquid by hydrolytic vanadium precipitation in the Lin and others 2022 route, and washed twice with ammonium chloride before calcination. An intermediate: the paper reports no composition for it, only the efficiency with which vanadium was precipitated and the effect of wash conditions on the purity of what the calcination later produced.

  • Kırşehir nepheline syenite lithium ore

    Run-of-mine ore from nepheline syenite rocks at Kırşehir, Turkey, reported at 216.3 ppm lithium. The lithium is carried in zinnwaldite, a lithium mica — not in spodumene — so nothing established for spodumene routes may be carried across to it.

  • Kırşehir roasted calcine, lithium sulphated

    The product of roasting Kırşehir zinnwaldite concentrate with gypsum as a sulfating agent, in which the study reports lithium converted to a water-soluble sulphate form. An intermediate defined by what the next step can dissolve out of it, not by any purity of its own.

  • Kırşehir water-leach mother liquor

    The aqueous liquor left after water-leaching the Kırşehir calcine. It carries 30 mg/dm3 lithium — and 144.4 mg/dm3 calcium, 142.1 potassium, 76.9 sodium and 26.7 aluminium. Ninety-three per cent of the lithium in the concentrate reached this liquor, and in it the lithium is outweighed several times over by the impurities that would have to be removed before any lithium compound could be made. It is not a lithium chemical product.

  • Kırşehir zinnwaldite flotation concentrate

    The flotation concentrate produced from Kırşehir nepheline syenite ore, reported at 0.25 per cent lithium — about 2500 ppm, roughly a twelvefold upgrade on the 216.3 ppm feed. A concentrate, and not a lithium chemical of any kind.

  • Korsnäs Pb-REE ore

    The ore of the Korsnäs deposit, which the survey reports as averaging 3.6 per cent lead across the 0.87 million tonnes mined, and as containing 0.83 per cent rare-earth oxides as established during pilot production of a rare-earth concentrate.

  • Korsnäs rare-earth concentrate

    A rare-earth concentrate produced at PILOT scale from Korsnäs ore. It is a concentrate and a pilot product: nothing in the source describes separation into individual rare-earth oxides, and no such stage is recorded here.

  • Krásno greisen ore

    The greisen material of the Hub stock: Li-mica-topaz and topaz-Li-mica greisens enriched, relative to the weakly greisenised topaz granites they replace, in calcium, fluorine, iron, lithium, silicon, tin and tungsten. It carries cassiterite and wolframite, and its Li-mica is zinnwaldite — a lithium host that is neither spodumene nor a brine.

  • Lithium carbonate

    The compound Li2CO3. Held as the generic material that a producer's specification governs, distinct from any particular batch or test product of it. Nothing measured on one sample is ever attached here.

  • Low-purity primary gallium

    Gallium metal as first recovered from bauxite processing or from zinc-processing residues, which the U.S. Geological Survey designates low-purity and unrefined. It is a distinct product from refined gallium, made in different countries, and it is the input to refining rather than a material any device is built from.

  • Mozambican tantalite ore (Thuthuka Group supply)

    The tantalite ore analysed in a 2012 University of Pretoria dissertation, stated by that work to have been mined in Mozambique and supplied by Thuthuka Group Ltd of South Africa. The source names a supplier and a country of mining and names no mine, deposit or district, so this entity is the material as that one work received it and is not a deposit.

  • Niobium pentoxide

    A refined niobium compound. It is the form in which niobium is specified and traded between refining and its downstream uses, and the form the Penouta slag route reports as its product. Carried here as the material a specification may govern, so that a producer's grade attaches to a compound rather than to a commodity.

  • Otanmäki ilmenite concentrate

    The ilmenite concentrate produced at the Otanmäki processing plant. It exists as a separate product because recrystallisation had separated ilmenite from magnetite into discrete grains — the same mineral, in a different textural state, from the intergrown hemo-ilmenite of Tellnes.

  • Otanmäki magnetite concentrate

    The magnetite concentrate produced at the Otanmäki processing plant, one of four products the plant made from a single ore. It carried the vanadium that the site's vanadium plant went on to recover.

  • Otanmäki pyrite concentrate

    The pyrite concentrate produced at the Otanmäki processing plant from the 1 to 2 per cent pyrite in the ore, the smallest of the plant's four products by tonnage.

  • Otanmäki V-Ti-Fe ore

    The run-of-mine material of the Otanmäki deposit: a magnetite-ilmenite ore in which recrystallisation left the two oxide minerals as discrete, separate grains, with 1 to 2 per cent pyrite and a gangue of chlorite, hornblende and plagioclase.

  • Penouta amorphous hydrated niobium oxide precursor

    The solid the study precipitates from the niobium strip solution with ammonia and dries at 80 °C, and which it calls a precursor because it is not yet the oxide. Calcining it loses about 19 per cent of its weight, so the material entering the furnace and the material leaving it are not the same material — a distinction the route had lost by naming both of them niobium pentoxide.

  • Penouta cassiterite concentrate from mine tailings

    A concentrate obtained by milling, gravimetric concentration and magnetic separation of tailings from the Penouta mine in Galicia, Spain, containing mainly cassiterite and used as the source material for producing metallic tin. It is recorded because it is what the slag in this chain is a residue OF.

  • Penouta niobium oxide from tin-recovery slag

    Niobium oxide obtained by precipitating a hydrated niobium oxide precursor from the stripped niobium solution with ammonia and calcining it. Refined in the sense that niobium has been separated from tantalum and from the leach matrix; NOT a high-purity or electronic-grade material. ITS Nb2O5 CONTENT IS NOT ESTABLISHED: the study states 98.5 per cent in its prose, abstract and conclusions, and 95.1 ± 2.9 per cent in its own XRF composition table, and does not reconcile the two — see claim:penouta-nb2o5-purity-figures-conflict. What IS established is the impurity profile, thirteen oxides measured by XRF and dominated by Ta2O5 at 1.8 per cent. Until Phase 36 this entity carried the figure 98.5 in its own NAME, which is how a contested number becomes an identity.

  • Penouta niobium–tantalum leach liquor

    The mixed liquor produced by leaching Penouta tin slag in hydrofluoric and sulphuric acid, carrying niobium and tantalum together. A mixed intermediate: at this point neither element is a product, and the whole difficulty of the route is that they are chemically alike enough to travel together.

  • Penouta precipitated tantalum salt, before calcination and purification

    The tantalum salt as it comes out of the precipitation with potassium fluoride, before the calcination and purification the study applies afterwards. The 97.3 per cent purity the study reports is stated to be AFTER those steps, so it is not a property of this material, and recording one entity for both states had attached it here by accident.

  • Penouta tantalum salt, 97.3 per cent

    The tantalum product of the same route, precipitated from the stripped tantalum solution with potassium fluoride and reported after calcination and purification at 97.3 per cent purity. The study calls it a tantalum salt and does not report it as Ta2O5; that distinction is kept, because a salt and an oxide are different materials.

  • Penouta tin-recovery slag

    The slag left after tin was recovered from Penouta mine tailings, supplied by the company that produced it. Columbotantalite is among the most abundant minerals it carries, so the niobium and tantalum discarded with the tin residue are what this chain begins from. Ground below 90 micrometres before leaching.

  • Recovered carbon black from car tyres, HCR variant

    Recovered carbon black produced by two-stage continuous pyrolysis of car tyre granulate, reported by Norris and others 2025 under the designation Car rCB HCR. A secondary material: it arose from processing and was never itself in service.

  • Recovered carbon black from car tyres, Mi360+

    Recovered carbon black produced by two-stage continuous pyrolysis of car tyre granulate, reported by Norris and others 2025 under the designation Mi360+. A secondary material: it arose from processing and was never itself in service.

  • Recovered carbon black from truck tyres, Mi360HP

    Recovered carbon black produced by two-stage continuous pyrolysis of truck tyre granulate, reported by Norris and others 2025 under the designation Mi360HP. A secondary material: it arose from processing and was never itself in service.

  • Tabuaço ball-mill product, minus 150 micrometres

    The comminuted Tabuaço skarn ore fed to gravity separation: crushed through three jaw crushers and a gyratory crusher to minus 4 millimetres, sieved so that only the plus 150 micrometre material went to a ball mill, and taken at minus 150 micrometres — the liberation size the ore's texture demands, estimated at 150 to 200 micrometres by optical microscopy. Not deslimed.

  • Tabuaço Falcon pre-concentrate

    The pre-concentrate produced from Tabuaço ball-mill product by centrifugal gravity separation on a Falcon Semi-Batch bowl: about 15 per cent of the feed by weight, carrying more than 70 per cent of the tungsten at an enrichment ratio above 4.5, with most calcium-bearing gangue and almost all of the fines rejected. A pre-concentrate intended as flotation feed, not a marketable tungsten concentrate.

  • Tabuaço scheelite skarn ore

    The skarn material of the Tabuaço deposit, in which scheelite occurs as finely disseminated anhedral crystals — 5 to 300 micrometres in the Main Skarn and below 150 micrometres in the Lower Skarn — closely associated with vesuvianite, the principal calcium-bearing silicate of the assemblage, alongside feldspars and fluorite.

  • Talvivaara black shale ore

    The nickel-zinc-copper-cobalt sulphide ore of the Talvivaara deposit, hosted in black shale and characterised by the survey as large in tonnage and relatively low in grade — the combination that decided which process could work it.

  • Tellnes ilmenite concentrate

    The ilmenite concentrate produced from Tellnes ore, which the Geological Survey of Finland reports as containing 44 to 45 per cent TiO2 — below the 52.8 per cent of stoichiometric ilmenite, for reasons that lie in the ore's mineralogy rather than in the plant. A concentrate is an upgraded mixture, not a refined chemical.

  • Tellnes Ti-rich noritic ore

    The run-of-mine material of the Tellnes deposit: a noritic rock whose titanium is carried in hemo-ilmenite, ilmenite with numerous exsolution lamellae of hematite. A mixture rather than a compound, and the feed from which the mine's ilmenite concentrate is made.

  • Titanium pigment (sulphate process)

    Titanium pigment made by the sulphate process, named by the Geological Survey of Finland as one of the two uses of Tellnes ilmenite, the other being ferro-titanium slag and pig iron. Recorded as a refined material because it is a chemical product rather than an upgraded ore, and named for its process route because the route is what the source states.

  • Tongshan shale route purified vanadium pentoxide, 99.05 per cent

    The solid vanadium pentoxide produced by the hydrolytic precipitation and ammonium-salt purification route of Lin and others 2022 and calcined at 520 degrees Celsius, whose composition the paper reports in its Table 2. It is a LABORATORY product of one reported test series, not a commercial grade and not a production population. It is held as its own material, separate from the compound vanadium pentoxide, so that a measurement of this sample can never be read as a measurement of the compound in general.

  • Tongshan shale vanadium-rich stripping liquid

    The vanadium-bearing sulphuric acid stripping liquid used as feed in the Lin and others 2022 purification study, obtained from vanadium shale at Tongshan, China by roasting, acid leaching, solvent extraction with D2EHPA and stripping. Its vanadium is tetravalent as received. It is a solution, and nothing about it is comparable to the composition of a solid.

  • Truck tyre granulate, Lakenheath line

    Tyre granulate prepared from 100% truck tyres on a commercial processing line at Lakenheath in the United Kingdom, as reported by Norris and others 2025. A secondary material: it is an article that reached the end of its service life, size-reduced.

  • Tungsten carbide powder

    A refined tungsten product which the U.S. Geological Survey names as one output of converting concentrates, ammonium paratungstate, tungsten oxide or scrap.

  • Tungsten concentrate

    A tungsten concentrate as it leaves a mine, which the U.S. Geological Survey names as one of the feeds convertible to tungsten metal powder, tungsten carbide powder and tungsten chemicals.

  • Vanadium pentoxide

    A refined vanadium compound. The Geological Survey of Finland reports it as the product of the vanadium plant at Otanmäki and states that, for the economy of the mine, it was the main product for most of the mine's life — although the ore was mined and the plant fed for its iron and titanium tonnages.

  • Villasrubias lepidolite ore

    A lepidolite-bearing ore from Villasrubias, Spain, characterised alongside the Cínovec zinnwaldite ore as its mechanical opposite: finer-grained, less rough, more disseminated mica, and the higher compressive strength of the two.

  • Zinnwald cone-crushed greisen product, 4 millimetres

    The product of cone-crushing jaw-crushed Zinnwald greisen to 4 millimetres, sized into seven sieve fractions for automated mineralogy. A comminution product characterised for liberation; NOT a concentrate, because no separation was performed on it.

  • Zinnwald greisen ore

    The greisen-type ore of the Cínovec–Zinnwald deposit: quartz, topaz and zinnwaldite with minor cassiterite, wolframite and fluorspar. Two independent studies have characterised greisen from this deposit and they characterised DIFFERENT SAMPLES — a bulk sample of about four tonnes taken from a greisen body for a comminution study, and the sample GCG-1 of a later survey — so their figures stand side by side rather than combining. Until Phase 41 this summary carried a median grain size of about 3.4 millimetres beside a maximum of about 5: the median belonged to a GREISENIZED GRANITE, a different rock of the same deposit, and the maximum was a figure one study cited from a thesis rather than measured.

  • Zinnwald jaw-crushed greisen, 35 millimetre gap

    The homogenised product of crushing the entire four-tonne Zinnwald bulk sample in a jaw crusher at a 35 millimetre gap, split into two representative subsamples that were then comminuted by two different routes.

  • Zinnwald pulse-fragmented greisen product

    The product of fragmenting jaw-crushed Zinnwald greisen by high voltage pulses on a SELFRAG laboratory instrument, classified into six sieve fractions for automated mineralogy. A comminution product characterised for liberation, not a concentrate.

Mineral groups

  • Alkali feldspar

    The potassium- and sodium-rich feldspars, including microcline, orthoclase and sanidine — one composition, three structural states, three species.

  • Amphibole

    Double-chain silicates. “Hornblende” — the name most often used for them in the field — is not an accepted species either, and Lithoen does not record it as one.

  • Biotite

    A name in universal scientific use that the IMA list does not accept as a species: it denotes the series between annite and phlogopite. Lithoen records it as a series so that the name remains usable without being mistaken for a species.

  • Clay minerals

    A functional grouping of fine-grained hydrous sheet silicates defined as much by grain size and behaviour as by structure. It is not an IMA grouping, and Lithoen marks it informal rather than implying an authority that does not exist.

  • Feldspar

    The most abundant mineral group of the crust — and a group, not a species. Its members split into the plagioclase series and the alkali feldspars, three of which share one formula and differ only in structural order.

  • Garnet

    Cubic orthosilicates sharing one structure type across a wide range of compositions, including almandine, pyrope and grossular.

  • Mica

    Sheet silicates whose structure produces perfect basal cleavage. Muscovite is a species within it; “biotite” is not.

  • Olivine

    A group of orthosilicate minerals, not a species. Natural olivine is a solid solution between forsterite and fayalite, and it is those end members — not “olivine” — that the IMA list accepts.

  • Plagioclase

    The continuous solid-solution series between albite and anorthite. A plagioclase composition is a position along that series, which is why the series and not a single formula is the right unit of description.

  • Pyroxene

    Single-chain silicates divided into orthopyroxenes and clinopyroxenes. Like olivine, a group name rather than a species.

  • Silicates

    The mineral class built from silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, subdivided by how those tetrahedra link: isolated, in chains, in sheets, or in three-dimensional frameworks.

Mineral systems

  • Magmatic nickel-copper-PGE sulfide system

    A wholly magmatic system in which a sulfide liquid separates from a silicate magma, scavenges chalcophile metals from it, and accumulates. There is no hydrothermal fluid and no aqueous transport: the concentrating agent is an immiscible liquid.

  • Mississippi Valley-type system

    A low-temperature system in which brines expelled from a sedimentary basin migrate through platform carbonates and precipitate lead and zinc sulfides where fluids mix or conditions change. It involves no magmatism at all, which is precisely why it belongs in the canon.

  • Nickel-cobalt laterite system

    A surface system in which prolonged chemical weathering of ultramafic rock strips away soluble magnesium and silicon and leaves nickel and cobalt behind in the residue and in secondary minerals. Its fluid is rainwater and its energy is climate.

  • Porphyry copper system

    A magmatic-hydrothermal system in which fluids exsolved from a crystallising granitoid porphyry carry copper, sulfur and other components into the surrounding rock, producing large volumes of weakly mineralised, strongly altered ground. It is the archetype against which other hydrothermal systems are described.

  • Stratiform chromite system

    A magmatic system in which chromite crystallises and accumulates into laterally extensive layers within a large layered intrusion. How those layers form is genuinely unresolved, which makes the system valuable to the canon as an example of a well-described phenomenon without a settled mechanism.

  • Volcanogenic massive sulfide system

    A seafloor hydrothermal system in which seawater is drawn into hot volcanic crust, evolves chemically by reacting with it, and discharges at the sea floor where abrupt cooling precipitates massive sulfide. Its driver is magmatic heat; its fluid is the ocean.

Minerals

  • Albite

    The sodium end member of the plagioclase feldspar series, and one of the most abundant minerals of the continental crust.

  • Almandine

    The iron–aluminium garnet, common in metamorphosed shales and a standard indicator of metamorphic conditions.

  • Annite

    The iron end member of the mica series commonly called biotite — a name the IMA list does not recognise as a species.

  • Anorthite

    The calcium end member of the plagioclase series. The coupled substitution that links it to albite exchanges sodium and silicon for calcium and aluminium together, keeping charge balanced.

  • Augite

    The common clinopyroxene of basalts and gabbros, whose approved formula is written with variable cations because its composition genuinely varies.

  • Calcite

    The commonest carbonate mineral and the principal constituent of limestone. Its solubility depends on the acidity of the water it meets, which makes it the mineral through which carbon moves between rock and ocean.

  • Chalcopyrite

    A copper–iron sulfide, and the standing illustration of chalcophile behaviour: copper in a sulfide, not a silicate.

  • Diopside

    A calcium–magnesium clinopyroxene: a single-chain silicate and one of the principal minerals of the mantle and of calcium-rich metamorphic rocks.

  • Dolomite

    A calcium–magnesium carbonate with the two cations ordered into alternate layers — a structural distinction, not merely a compositional one.

  • Enstatite

    The magnesium orthopyroxene, and with olivine one of the main constituents of mantle peridotite.

  • Fayalite

    The iron end member of the olivine series. Natural olivines are almost never pure fayalite or pure forsterite but sit somewhere between them.

  • Ferrosilite

    The iron end member of the orthopyroxene series. Its IMA status is “renamed”, a reminder that mineral names have histories and that the list records them.

  • Forsterite

    The magnesium end member of the olivine series and the dominant mineral of the upper mantle. Its structure is isolated silicate tetrahedra bound by magnesium and iron, which is why its composition varies continuously toward the iron end member.

  • Grossular

    The calcium–aluminium garnet, typical of metamorphosed impure carbonate rocks.

  • Hematite

    The ferric iron oxide, and the mineral in which iron released by oxidation is most commonly fixed.

  • Kaolinite

    A clay mineral produced by the hydrolysis of feldspar. It is the residue of intense chemical weathering, retaining aluminium and silicon after the soluble cations have gone.

  • Magnetite

    A strongly magnetic iron oxide. Its presence in ocean-floor basalt is what allowed the sea floor to record the polarity of Earth’s magnetic field as it cooled — and so what made seafloor spreading detectable.

  • Microcline

    A potassium feldspar with an ordered aluminium–silicon distribution, and one of three species sharing the same formula but differing in structural state.

  • Montmorillonite

    A swelling clay of the smectite family, whose interlayer sites take up water and exchangeable cations.

  • Muscovite

    The common white mica: a sheet silicate whose perfect basal cleavage follows the planes of its structure, and whose platy grains align under directed pressure to make foliation.

  • Orthoclase

    A potassium feldspar of intermediate structural order — the same composition as microcline and sanidine, distinguished from them by how aluminium and silicon are arranged.

  • Phlogopite

    The magnesium end member of the series commonly called biotite, forming a solid solution with annite.

  • Pyrite

    Iron disulfide, the commonest sulfide mineral. Its formation requires reducing conditions and its breakdown on exposure to oxygen and water drives acid generation.

  • Pyrope

    The magnesium–aluminium garnet, characteristic of high-pressure rocks and of the mantle.

  • Quartz

    A hard, chemically simple silicate mineral (silicon dioxide) that is among the most abundant minerals of the continental crust and the index mineral for hardness 7 on the Mohs scale.

  • Sanidine

    The high-temperature potassium feldspar, with aluminium and silicon disordered across its tetrahedral sites. Its presence records rapid cooling.

  • Scheelite

    Calcium tungstate, the principal tungsten mineral of skarn deposits. Its properties decide how it must be processed: it is diamagnetic like most of its gangue, so magnetic separation is unsuitable; its specific gravity of 6.1 invites gravity separation, but in skarn ores it is finely liberated and tends to form particles below 10 micrometres that gravity loses.

  • Zircon

    A zirconium silicate that accepts uranium into its structure but excludes lead, so that any lead it contains accumulated by decay. That property, plus its durability, makes it the most important single mineral in geochronology.

Mountain ranges

  • Alps

    A collisional mountain belt of Europe. Beneath large ranges such as the Alps the base of the crust can lie far deeper than the continental average — mountains have roots as well as summits.

  • Andes

    The mountain chain forming the western backbone of South America, raised as the overriding South American Plate is lifted above the subducting Nazca Plate.

  • Cascade Range

    A volcanic mountain range of the Pacific Northwest of North America, one of the classic expressions of arc volcanism above a subduction zone.

  • Himalaya

    The highest continental mountain range on Earth, raised by the ongoing collision between the Indian and Eurasian Plates.

Oceanic ridges

  • East Pacific Rise

    A fast-spreading divergent boundary in the eastern Pacific. Near Easter Island it records the highest average rate of plate separation measured on the mid-ocean ridge system.

  • Global mid-ocean ridge system

    The connected submarine mountain chain that winds around the entire planet at divergent plate boundaries. It is the largest topographic feature on Earth’s surface and the site where most new crust is made.

  • Mid-Atlantic Ridge

    A submerged mountain range extending from the Arctic Ocean to beyond the southern tip of Africa: one segment of the global mid-ocean ridge system, where new oceanic crust is generated as plates move apart.

Planets

  • Earth

    The third planet from the Sun and the only body known to sustain plate tectonics. Its layered interior — crust, mantle and core — drives the geological processes that shape its surface.

Process facilities

  • ALS Laboratories, Perth

    The third-party laboratory in Perth, Western Australia where the Cínovec pilot campaign was performed. It matters to this corpus because a European project's flagship metallurgical result was produced on another continent, at an installation the project does not own.

  • AMG Lithium hydroxide refinery, Bitterfeld-Wolfen

    A lithium hydroxide plant at Bitterfeld-Wolfen in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, opened by AMG Critical Materials on 18 September 2024 and described by its operator as Europe's first lithium hydroxide refinery. Its operator's own technical presentation describes Module 1 as converting TECHNICAL-GRADE lithium hydroxide into BATTERY-GRADE lithium hydroxide — an upgrading step, not a spodumene converter. For the full year 2025 the operator states that the refinery has continued to ramp up its production, producing in-specification battery-grade lithium hydroxide, while customer qualification had reached only its first stage. Everything recorded about this installation is operator-reported. Lithoen holds no independent observation of it, no production volume, and no record of what was actually fed to it in any particular period.

  • AMG Vanadium, Cambridge, Ohio

    A site at Cambridge, Ohio listed by AMG among its group locations. It exists here to make an ambiguity explicit rather than latent: the same group runs vanadium businesses on two continents, so the words AMG and vanadium together locate nothing, and Phase 49 recorded that the German vanadium data sheets cannot be placed at either.

  • Clarksville zinc smelter

    A zinc smelter at Clarksville, Tennessee, which the U.S. Geological Survey reports as having recovered germanium, in the form of an intermediate leach concentrate for export, from germanium-bearing zinc concentrates sent to it from a Tennessee mine. The survey reports that the mine's operations remained suspended through 2024 and says nothing about the smelter's own current state, so its status here is UNKNOWN rather than assumed.

  • EcoPro BM cathode materials production facility, Debrecen

    A cathode active material production facility in Debrecen, Hungary, named by AMG in its 2022 binding supply agreement as the destination for battery-grade lithium hydroxide. It exists here as the named end of an undertaking. NO delivery to it has ever been reported, and nothing in this corpus establishes what it has produced or consumed.

  • GfE Fremat GmbH, Brand-Erbisdorf

    A site at Gewerbegebiet Süd 20, 09618 Brand-Erbisdorf, Saxony, listed by GfE on its own locations page as hosting GfE Fremat GmbH. The page states NOTHING about what is made or done there, so the facility role is UNSTATED rather than guessed from the owner or the address.

  • GfE V-Chemie production area, Höfener Str. 45, Nürnberg

    A vanadium-chemistry production area at Höfener Str. 45 in Nürnberg, operated by GfE Metalle und Materialien GmbH. It exists as an entity here because a regulator — the Stadt Nürnberg Umweltamt, in a 2023 immission-control procedure — records that the firm operates plants for the extraction of vanadium at that site. The same street appears in the contact block of the producer's vanadium pentoxide data sheets, and that coincidence is NOT what places the installation here: a postal address is not an installation, and the regulator's record is. No source read attributes any graded article to this installation.

  • Mibra mine, Minas Gerais

    The mine in Minas Gerais, Brazil that the operator's own value chain places at the start of the route to its German lithium hydroxide refinery. The operator names it as a spodumene and tantalum producer. No document held here reports material from it arriving anywhere in Europe.

  • OAO Solikamsk Magnesium Works, Solikamsk

    The works at Solikamsk, Perm Krai, that issues the seven niobium pentoxide grade specifications this corpus holds. Its own product page gives the company address and names grades; it states no production site for the product and no function for the works, so the facility role is UNSTATED.

  • Otanmäki vanadium plant

    The plant at Otanmäki that produced vanadium pentoxide, named by the Geological Survey of Finland alongside the processing plant that made the site's magnetite, ilmenite and pyrite concentrates. The mine and its plants are no longer working, so no current status is claimed for it.

  • The Quartz Corp, Drag

    Two quartz refining plants operated at Drag in Norway by The Quartz Corp, reported as operating with more than 35 million US dollars of upgrades. Lithoen holds NO evidence of what these plants are fed: the same company also operates at Spruce Pine in the United States, and the source that names the Drag plants records European imports of high-purity quartz from several countries. A European purification facility with an unestablished feed origin is exactly what it is, and nothing is inferred to fill that in.

Resource commodities

  • Chromium (commodity)

    Chromium as a sought material, won almost entirely from chromite accumulated in layered intrusions.

  • Cobalt (commodity)

    Cobalt as a sought material, characteristically recovered alongside nickel rather than on its own.

  • Copper (commodity)

    Copper as a sought material rather than as a chemical element. The distinction matters: the element is in every crustal rock, and the commodity exists only where a system has concentrated it and left it recoverable.

  • Gallium (commodity)

    Gallium as a traded commodity. It is recovered as a byproduct of processing bauxite and zinc ores rather than mined for itself, so its availability follows the processing of other metals rather than the discovery of gallium deposits.

  • Germanium (commodity)

    Germanium as a traded commodity. It reaches refiners inside zinc concentrates produced for their zinc, which makes its supply a property of somebody else's process stream.

  • Gold (commodity)

    Gold as a sought material, recovered from a wide range of systems including as a by-product of copper systems.

  • Indium (commodity)

    Indium as a traded commodity. In the Polish case held here it reports to a zinc-process dross alongside germanium, and the two behave differently in the same acid.

  • Lead (commodity)

    Lead as a sought material, characteristically accompanying zinc in low-temperature carbonate-hosted systems.

  • Lithium (commodity)

    Lithium as a traded commodity, distinct from the chemical element. In the greisen systems of the Erzgebirge/Krušné hory it is carried not in spodumene but in zinnwaldite, a lithium-rich mica — a difference in host mineral that changes what any separation process has to do.

  • Molybdenum (commodity)

    Molybdenum as a sought material, characteristically a by-product of porphyry systems.

  • Nickel (commodity)

    Nickel as a sought material, won from two entirely different kinds of system: magmatic sulfide accumulations and lateritic weathering profiles.

  • Niobium (commodity)

    Niobium as a traded commodity. In the Iberian case held here it is carried in columbotantalite alongside tantalum, and the two must be taken apart chemically before either is a product.

  • Platinum-group elements (commodity)

    The platinum-group elements as sought materials, characteristically concentrated by immiscible sulfide liquid in magmatic systems.

  • Rare earth elements (commodity)

    A commodity GROUPING, not a chemical element: the lanthanides together with yttrium and sometimes scandium, sought and reported as a group because they occur together and are separated only with difficulty. The clearest case in the corpus that a commodity is not an element.

  • Silica (commodity)

    Silica as an industrial mineral commodity. Quartz is abundant; quartz pure enough for a photovoltaic crucible or a semiconductor component is not, and the difference is measured in single parts per million of aluminium and iron.

  • Silver (commodity)

    Silver as a commodity: recovered from a wide range of deposit classes, and recorded in both USGS deposit databases Lithoen reads as a grade in grams per tonne alongside the principal metals.

  • Tantalum (commodity)

    Tantalum as a traded commodity, chemically close enough to niobium that separating the two is the whole difficulty of the route this corpus holds.

  • Tin (commodity)

    Tin as a traded commodity, distinct from the chemical element. In the greisen systems of the Krušné hory it is carried in cassiterite, which one study of the Krásno Hub stock reports at above 99 weight per cent SnO2 — a near-ideal oxide, whatever that may or may not imply for how it separates.

  • Titanium (commodity)

    Titanium as a traded commodity, distinct from the chemical element. Its mineral feedstocks include ilmenite, whose behaviour in processing depends on features — hematite exsolution, magnesium in the lattice — that vary between bodies carrying the same mineral name.

  • Tungsten (commodity)

    Tungsten as a traded commodity, moving from mine concentrates through ammonium paratungstate and oxide to metal and carbide powders.

  • Vanadium (commodity)

    Vanadium as a traded commodity. At Otanmäki it was carried in magnetite at 0.62 per cent and recovered from the magnetite concentrate rather than mined for itself — a byproduct in the ground and, by the survey's account, the main product in the accounts.

  • Zinc (commodity)

    Zinc as a sought material, characteristically won from sediment-hosted and volcanogenic sulfide systems.

Rifts

  • East African Rift

    A zone of active continental rifting in East Africa where the lithosphere is being stretched, fractured and intruded by rising magma — a candidate site of a future spreading centre.

  • Red Sea Rift

    The rift separating Arabia from Africa. It is further advanced than the East African Rift: continental breakup has already produced a narrow ocean basin.

Rocks

  • Andesite

    A fine-grained extrusive igneous rock of intermediate composition, characteristic of volcanic arcs above subduction zones.

  • Basalt

    A common fine-grained extrusive igneous rock, formed where magma erupts and cools quickly at or very near the surface.

  • Conglomerate

    A clastic sedimentary rock of rounded pebbles set in a finer matrix, recording transport energetic enough to move coarse material.

  • Gabbro

    A coarse-grained intrusive igneous rock, the slowly cooled equivalent of basalt. It forms much of the lower oceanic crust.

  • Gneiss

    A coarsely banded, high-grade metamorphic rock. The oldest rocks yet found on Earth are gneisses.

  • Granite

    A coarse-grained intrusive igneous rock, typically an interlocking mixture of quartz, feldspar and mica. Its coarse crystals record slow cooling deep inside the crust.

  • Limestone

    A carbonate sedimentary rock formed from the remains of organisms or by direct precipitation from water. Under metamorphism it recrystallises into marble.

  • Marble

    A metamorphic rock produced from limestone or another carbonate rock, harder and more crystalline than its protolith. Its minerals are not flat or elongate, so it does not develop foliation.

  • Obsidian

    A volcanic glass formed when silica-rich lava cools too quickly for crystals to grow at all. Its texture is a direct record of the cooling rate.

  • Peridotite

    A dense, olivine-rich intrusive igneous rock. It is the principal rock of the upper mantle, and partial melting of peridotite is where most of Earth’s magma begins.

  • Quartzite

    A hard, non-foliated metamorphic rock formed from quartz-rich sandstone.

  • Rhyolite

    A fine-grained extrusive igneous rock of silica-rich composition. Magma of this kind is viscous, traps its gases, and tends to erupt explosively.

  • Sandstone

    A clastic sedimentary rock made of sand-sized grains cemented together. Its grains are fragments of older rock, so a sandstone carries a record of a landscape that no longer exists.

  • Schist

    A strongly foliated metamorphic rock with visibly aligned platy minerals, formed at higher grade than slate.

  • Shale

    A fine-grained clastic sedimentary rock made mostly of clay-sized particles, deposited where water was still enough for the finest material to settle.

  • Siltstone

    A clastic sedimentary rock of silt-sized grains, intermediate between shale and sandstone in the grain-size classification.

  • Slate

    A fine-grained metamorphic rock produced from shale, splitting along planes created by the alignment of platy minerals under directed pressure.

Scientific methods

  • Electron microprobe analysis

    Focuses an electron beam on a polished sample and measures the characteristic X-rays emitted, giving the composition of a spot a few micrometres across. It is what makes it possible to analyse a single mineral grain rather than a whole rock.

  • Geomagnetic field modelling

    Representation of the observed geomagnetic field as a mathematical model — typically a spherical-harmonic expansion valid for a defined epoch — separating contributions from the core, the crust and external currents.

  • Geoneutrino detection

    Measurement of antineutrinos emitted by radioactive decay inside the Earth. Because geoneutrinos pass through the planet almost unaffected, they carry information about deep radiogenic heat production that no other method can reach.

  • Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry

    Ionises a dissolved or ablated sample in a plasma and counts the ions by mass. It reaches trace and ultra-trace concentrations and isotope ratios, which is why it underpins most modern trace-element geochemistry.

  • Isotope-ratio mass spectrometry

    Measures the ratio of isotopes of an element to high precision. Ratios, not absolute abundances, are what carry information about age, source and process.

  • Marine magnetic surveying

    Measurement of magnetic variations across the sea floor. Because ocean-floor basalt records the polarity of Earth’s field as it cools, these surveys turned the sea floor into a record of its own formation.

  • Optical petrography

    Examination of a rock thinned to about thirty micrometres under a polarising microscope. It is the one method in this set that observes the rock directly, and it reads texture — the record of how minerals grew in relation to one another — which no bulk analysis can recover.

  • Radiometric dating

    Determination of numerical ages from the decay of long-lived radioactive isotopes in rocks and minerals. It dates the last time a sample was melted or sufficiently disturbed, which is why the age of a rock and the age of the Earth are different questions.

  • Seismic tomography

    Reconstruction of three-dimensional variations in seismic wave speed within the Earth from very large numbers of wave observations. It produces images of the mantle, but they are model reconstructions with finite resolution, not photographs.

  • Seismology

    The study of seismic waves generated by earthquakes and other sources. Because the waves travel through the whole planet and change character at every boundary they cross, seismology is the principal means by which Earth’s interior is known at all.

  • X-ray diffraction

    Determines what crystalline phases are present, and their structural parameters, from the angles at which a sample diffracts X-rays. It identifies structure, not composition: two minerals of identical chemistry but different structure are distinguishable, and two of identical structure but different chemistry are not.

  • X-ray fluorescence

    Measures the characteristic X-rays emitted by a sample under excitation, giving the concentrations of major and some minor elements. Strong on abundant elements, limited on the trace elements that carry most geochemical information.

Tectonic plates

  • African Plate

    A major plate carrying Africa and part of the surrounding ocean floor. It is being actively split in East Africa, where a new spreading centre may be developing.

  • Altiplano Plate

    A block of the central Andes distinguished in plate models because the high plateau moves measurably relative to stable South America. Its existence in a model is a statement about how deformation is distributed, not a claim that the Andes are a separate continent.

  • Amur Plate

    A plate of northeast Asia moving slowly relative to Eurasia, separated from it in plate models by the Baikal Rift — a continental rift far from any ocean.

  • Anatolian Plate

    A plate carrying most of Turkey, moving westward between the North and East Anatolian fault systems as Arabia pushes north into Eurasia. A textbook example of a block escaping sideways from a collision.

  • Antarctic Plate

    A major plate carrying Antarctica and a wide surround of ocean floor. It is unusual in being almost entirely ringed by spreading centres, so that it grows on nearly every side and subducts along almost none.

  • Arabian Plate

    A plate carrying the Arabian Peninsula, separated from the African Plate by the Red Sea — an ocean basin caught in the act of opening.

  • Australian Plate

    A major plate carrying Australia, part of the Indian Ocean floor and the southern part of New Guinea. Its northern edge is a long convergent zone running from Indonesia to New Zealand, and its motion is among the fastest measured for a large plate.

  • Burma Plate

    A narrow sliver plate between the Indian and Sunda plates, carrying the Andaman and Nicobar islands and the Burma ranges, formed by the strongly oblique convergence along the Sunda margin.

  • Caribbean Plate

    A small plate between the Americas, bounded by transform systems to north and south and by subduction along the Lesser Antilles to the east. Its interior includes an oceanic plateau far thicker than normal ocean crust.

  • Cocos Plate

    A young oceanic plate of the eastern Pacific, created at the East Pacific Rise and consumed beneath Central America along the Middle America Trench.

  • Eurasian Plate

    A major plate carrying Europe and most of Asia. It separates from the North American Plate along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and converges with the Indian Plate along the Himalayan collision zone.

  • Indian Plate

    The plate carrying the Indian subcontinent, whose collision with Eurasia raised the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau and continues to shorten the crust today.

  • Juan de Fuca Plate

    A small remnant of the once-vast Farallon Plate, still spreading offshore and still subducting beneath North America along the Cascadia margin, where it feeds the Cascade arc.

  • Nazca Plate

    An oceanic plate of the eastern Pacific that is being subducted beneath the South American Plate along the Peru–Chile trench, driving Andean uplift and seismicity.

  • North American Plate

    A major tectonic plate carrying most of North America, bounded on its west by the San Andreas transform system and on its east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

  • North Andes Plate

    A crustal sliver along the northwestern margin of South America, moving northeastward relative to the South American Plate as the Nazca Plate converges obliquely against it.

  • Okhotsk Plate

    A plate of the northwest Pacific margin carrying the Sea of Okhotsk, Kamchatka and northern Japan, caught between the converging Pacific, Philippine Sea, Eurasian and Amur plates.

  • Pacific Plate

    The largest tectonic plate, dominantly oceanic, whose boundaries include the San Andreas transform system and the subduction zone marked by the Mariana Trench.

  • Philippine Sea Plate

    An oceanic plate of the western Pacific. The fast-moving Pacific Plate converges against it, and the Mariana Trench marks where subduction occurs.

  • Scotia Plate

    A small plate between South America and Antarctica, bounded by transform systems on its long north and south edges and by the South Sandwich subduction zone to the east.

  • Somali Plate

    The eastern part of what is often mapped as a single African Plate, separated from it in plate models by the East African Rift. Whether the rift has yet made two plates is a question about how much relative motion a model needs before it draws a boundary.

  • South American Plate

    A major plate carrying South America and the adjacent South Atlantic sea floor: overriding the Nazca Plate on its west, diverging from Africa on its east.

  • Sunda Plate

    A plate carrying southeast Asia and the Sunda Shelf, separated from Eurasia in plate models because it moves measurably relative to it. Its southern edge is the Sunda arc, one of the most active subduction systems on Earth.

  • Yangtze Plate

    A plate of eastern Asia carrying the South China block, one of several distinguished from Eurasia in plate models because eastward escape from the India–Eurasia collision gives it its own motion.

Trenches

  • Mariana Trench

    An oceanic trench paralleling the Mariana Islands, marking where the Pacific Plate converges against the Philippine Plate. Its southern end holds the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point of the ocean floor.

  • Peru–Chile Trench

    The trench marking where the oceanic Nazca Plate descends beneath the continental margin of South America — the convergent boundary responsible for the Andes and for the region’s great earthquakes.

Volcanoes

  • Kīlauea

    One of the world’s most active volcanoes, on the Island of Hawaiʻi. As a basaltic shield volcano far from any plate boundary, it is the type example of intraplate volcanism.

  • Krafla

    A volcano in northeastern Iceland astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where rifting episodes between 1975 and 1984 opened ground cracks that could be measured directly.

  • Mauna Loa

    The largest volcano of the Island of Hawaiʻi, a basaltic shield rising more than four kilometres above sea level and far more above the sea floor.

  • Mount St. Helens

    A stratovolcano of the Cascade Range in Washington State, and the standard illustration of how magma composition governs whether an eruption flows or explodes.