- Nicole Meyer, graduate student at the University of Alberta’s Diamond Exploration Research and Training School, Canada and the lead author of the research, discovered a new mineral named ‘Goldschmidtite’inside a diamond from a mine- Koffiefontein pipe in South Africa run by De Beers. It is named goldschmidtite in honor of Victor Moritz Goldschmidt, the founder of modern geochemistry.
Key Points
- The study “Goldschmidtite, (K,REE,Sr)(Nb,Cr)O3: a New Perovskite Supergroup Mineral Found in Diamond from Koffiefontein, South Africa,” was published in American Mineralogist.
- It has high concentrations of niobium, potassium and the rare earth elements lanthanum and cerium and the rest mantle is dominated by other elements, such as magnesium and iron.
- It was estimated that the mineral was formed about 170 kilometers beneath Earth’s surface, at temperatures reaching nearly 1,200 C.
