A dusty envelope misplaced in a government archive has rewritten a chapter of mineral history. That 1949 letter, discovered ...

After reclassifying all of Earth's minerals based on where and how they formed, geologists ended up with a catalog of more than 10,000 kinds.

How do earthquakes happen in Earth's tightly squeezed middle layers where pressure is far too great to allow any shifting of the rock? According to a paper published in the April 1 issue of the ...

A new census of Earth’s crystal past hints that life may have begun earlier than expected, and could be a tool to look for water and life elsewhere.

Rocks remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when it’s warm and rainy, in a process that's like nature's air filter.

The work is published by Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Mineral evolution is an approach to understanding Earth's changing near-surface geochemistry.

A new approach to mineralogy attests to mineral diversity and could advance scientists’ understandings about life on Earth and other planets.

NASA and USGS are mapping critical minerals in the American West using airborne sensors to help reduce U.S. reliance on ...

Peering down through the layers that make up Earth – the crust, the upper mantle, the lower mantle, and the core – is no easy task. After all, it's not as if there's a cross-section of the planet ...

Following a clue in a 75-year-old letter, experts discovered previously unknown samples of Humboldtine, one of the rarest minerals found on Earth.

The work is published by Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Mineral evolution is an approach to understanding Earth's changing near-surface geochemistry.

The building blocks for life, including salts, organic matter and amino acids have been found in samples returned to Earth from outer space.