Why Geology Is Our Destiny - The New York Times

A visit to the renovated hall of gems and minerals at the American Museum of Natural History reveals how the cosmos works in the real world.

A large stibnite mineral from China on display at the American Museum of Natural History.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times.

Much of that collection wound up in the American Museum of Natural History.

I made the acquaintance of Morgan’s tourmaline, along with the original tourmaline found by those hikers (fashioned into a watch fob inscribed with the word Primus, or “first”), on a recent visit to the newly reopened Allison and Roberto Mignone Hall of Gems and Minerals.

Some of these minerals are almost as old as time itself.

The nano-diamonds found in stardust could have formed in supernova explosions that occurred only a couple of hundred million years after the Big Bang, Dr.

A geode, it formed 135 million years ago in Uruguay when water bearing minerals leached into an underground chamber, perhaps a bubble in the magma, and then crystallized on the walls.

All minerals are formed by the same fundamentals: water, heat and pressure.

Geology is biological destiny: Whatever minerals land or are deposited in a place determine what or who can make a living there millions of years later.

Kunz arrived with an offer to buy it for the Natural History Museum.

The museum bought a couple of fragments, which sat for many years.

Museum officials have counted 884 rings and dated the tree to 33 million to 35 million years ago.

Harlow pointed out a similar-size slab of redwood, cut down in 1891, around a few corners in the Hall of American Forests.

Life learned how to make minerals, in teeth, bones and shells.” Eventually, life returns to minerals in the form of fossils and petrified wood.