Principles of identification of new mineral species and recognition of their names (some thoughts on mineral names)

Natural selection of mineral species

“…Some authors of such statistics assume the ill founded expansion of the complete inventory of mineral spe cies (Bulakh et al, 2001;Yaroshevsky, 2003Yaroshevsky, , 2008Silaev, 2008). Many specialists express their anxiety set forth, in particular, by Borutsky (2005Borutsky ( , 2007 and Yaroshevsky and Bagdasarov (2007) that too many varieties of known mineral species appeared among new minerals; too many uncertainties and even errors are discovered in the writing of formulas; manipula tions with arbitrary boundaries, especially as concerns the 50% criterion of occupancy of one or several sites of structure, are excessive; etc. Uncertainty remains in the determination of the lower size boundary of indi vidual minerals and the possibility of identifying min eral species at the nanolevel.…”

“…From recalculation of hundreds of analyses, Yaroshevsky and Bagdasarov (2007) proposed a ratio nal systematics for this group, where the entire diver sity of structural-chemical varieties is reduced to four mineral species: labuntsovite, niobolabuntsovite, nenadkevichite, and titanonenadkevichite. The eudi alyte group includes only 4 mineral species and about 30 structural-chemical varieties (Bulakh, 2004;Borutsky, 2007;Yaroshevsky and Bagdasarov, 2007). Even in the modern and popular reference book, e.g., Strunz and Nickel (2001), a significant part of varieties appears in the list of mineral species, often under own names.…”

The number of minerals of different chemical elements: Statistics 2007

“…697-701. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2008 Original Russian Text © A.A. Yaroshevsky, 2008, published in Zapiski Rossiiskogo Mineralogicheskogo Obshchestva, 2008 Continuous discoveries of new minerals at a "speed" of 50-70 items a year expand the mineralogical database and raise a question on its geochemical representativeness. About 300 new minerals were described after the previously published mineral statistics (Yaroshevsky, 2003), the database having increased by more than 7%.…”

“…The combination of isomorphically related mineral varieties of similar structure into mineral groups (Yaroshevsky and Bagdasarov, 2007) was continued. However, I was not able to do this for all minerals, and the figures presented in the tables reflect only the current moment.…”

Chemical, structural, and chemical-structural varieties of minerals and once again on ways to rationalize mineralogical nomenclature

“…We do not consider these varieties as independent minerals. Yaroshevsky and Bagdasarov (2007) briefly reviewed the eudialyte-and labuntsovite-group minerals and proposed rational names for them. A system of writing the names of such minerals should be developed.…”