Carbon Mineral Ecology: Predicting the Undiscovered Minerals of Carbon

Abstract:

The diversity and distribution of Earth’s minerals through deep time reflects key events in our planet's crustal evolution. Studies in mineral ecology exploit mineralogical databases to document diversity-distribution relationships of minerals, which reveal that all carbon-bearing minerals, as well as subsets containing C with O, H, Ca, or Na, conform to Large Number of Rare Events (LNRE) distributions. LNRE models facilitate prediction of total mineral diversity, and thus point to minerals that exist on Earth but have not yet been discovered and described. Our model predicts that at least 548 C minerals exist on Earth today, indicating that at least 145 carbon-bearing mineral species have yet to be discovered. Furthermore, by analyzing subsets of the most common additional elements in carbon-bearing minerals (i.e., 378 C + O species; 282 C + H species; 133 C + Ca species; and 100 C + Na species), we predict that 129 of these missing carbon minerals contain oxygen, 118 contain hydrogen, 52 contain calcium, and more than 60 contain sodium. The majority of these as yet undescribed minerals are predicted to be hydrous carbonates, many of which may have been overlooked because they are colorless, poorly crystalized, and/or water-soluble.

We propose the identities of plausible as yet undescribed carbon minerals, as well as search strategies for their discovery. Some of these minerals will be natural examples of known synthetic compounds, including carbides such as calcium carbide (CaC₂), crystalline hydrocarbons such as pyrene (C₁₆H₁₀), and numerous oxalates, anhydrous carbonates, and hydrous carbonates. Many other missing carbon minerals will be isomorphs of known carbon minerals, notably of the more than 100 different hydrous carbonate structures. An understanding of Earth’s “missing” minerals provides a more complete picture of geochemical processes that influence crustal evolution.