His Greenland explorations won admirers like John Franklin and William Scoresby. But Karl Ludwig Giesecke is best known for ...

WASHINGTON, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Scientists have detected some of the oldest signs of life on Earth using a new method that recognizes chemical fingerprints of living organisms in ancient rocks, an ...

Kryptonite is no longer just the stuff of fiction feared by caped superheroes. A new mineral matching its unique chemistry - as described in the film Superman Returns - has been identified in a mine ...

Pictured above is smithsonite, a zinc carbonate mineral that was named after James Smithson (c. 1765–1829), a British chemist, mineralogist, and the founding donor of the Smithsonian Institution.

Amethyst geodes—some stretching 5 m long—dot the ancient lava flows of Uruguay’s Los Catalanes mining area. The geodes contain calcite, colorless quartz, and agate, another quartz mineral. Large ...

ABSTRACT: The charnockites of Marandahalli, Dharmapuri District, Tamil Nadu India, form a part of the southern granulitic terrain in the Salem Block (SB). The charnockites are medium to coarse grained ...

ABSTRACT: The mafic enclaves from Paleoproterozoic domain are considered to be the results of large-scale crust-mantle interaction and magma mixing. In this paper, petrography, mineralogy and ...

Mineralogist and crystallographer Larry Finger, who spent more than three decades at Carnegie Science before retiring in 1999, passed away June 21 at his home in Smithville, Missouri. Working at ...

A specimen of smithsonite housed in the museum’s mineral and gem collection. Jack Tamisiea, NMNH With more than 148 million specimens and objects, the vast majority of the National Museum of Natural ...

Gabriela Farfan, the Smithsonian's curator of gems and minerals, answers the internet's burning questions about gemstones. Are all minerals crystals? How are diamonds cut? How do geodes form? Is the ...