Evolution isn't just for living organisms. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have found that the mineral kingdom co-evolved with life, and that up to two thirds of the more than 4,000 known types of minerals on Earth can be directly or indirectly linked to biological activity.
The finding, published in
American Mineralogist, could aid scientists in the search for life on other planets.
© iStockphoto/Russell ShivelyElrathii kingii trilobite from the middle Cambrian period, approximately 550 million years BCE. Found in a sandy shale formation south of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Robert Hazen and Dominic Papineau of the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, with six colleagues, reviewed the physical, chemical, and biological processes that gradually transformed about a dozen different primordial minerals in ancient interstellar dust grains to the thousands of mineral species on the present-day Earth. (Unlike biological species, each mineral species is defined by its characteristic chemical makeup and crystal structure.)