|The era of planetary accretion (top) and the era of biologically mediated mineralogy (bottom) saw increased diversity of Earth's near-surface mineralogy. Click on photo to enlarge image.|
Pardee Keynote Symposium P4
Mineral Evolution: The Coevolution of the Geo- and Biospheres
Mon., 1 Nov., 8 a.m.–noon
Robert Hazen; John B. Brady; Martin B. Goldhaber
Sponsored by Mineralogical Society of America; Geochemical Society
On 6 Dec. 2006, a biologist at a faculty party asked a mineralogist a naïve question: "Were there any clay minerals in the Archean?" Over the next two years, that novel question — surprising in that mineralogists have rarely considered the time element in their field — led to the concept of "mineral evolution," a new way to frame a very old field in a historical context. According to this approach, the mineralogy of terrestrial planets evolves as a consequence of varied physical, chemical, and biological processes. A diverse group of mineralogists and petrologists, all contributors to the development of mineral evolution, will present their latest findings and insights at this Pardee Symposium.
Mineralogy/Crystallography; Geochemistry; Precambrian Geology