We know that life evolves, but did you know that minerals do, too?

Remarkably, one of the biggest drivers of mineral evolution… is life.

A mineral is simply an element or elements on the periodic table, arranged in a certain crystal structure. For instance, the hardest mineral, diamond, is formed of the element carbon.

One of the softest, graphite, is also formed of pure carbon, but it’s a different mineral because it has a different crystal structure.

When Earth formed, over 4.5 billion years ago, there were just 12 minerals, including diamond and graphite.

Over the next 2 billion years, plate tectonics began to act on mineral evolution.

Earth’s crust was subducted into the mantle, melted, remixed, and recycled, and the number of mineral species gradually increased to 1,500. And there it stopped…

Until life developed.

Early algae and phytoplankton converted huge volumes of carbon dioxide into oxygen.

This new oxygen-rich environment produced more than 2,500 new oxide and hydroxide mineral species.

Microbes then began to transform minerals chemically, and this added another 500 mineral species.

Multicell organisms evolved and interacted with existing minerals to build their exoskeletons, shells, bones, and teeth, in the process creating hundreds more mineral species.

Because Earth has plate tectonics and life, it now has over 5,000 minerals—10 times more than any other planet in the solar system.