New Mineral Qingsongite Discovered
A new mineral, cubic boron nitride, has been officially approved by the International Mineralogical Association as “qingsongite.” You'd think there aren't a lot of mineral discoveries happening every day but this had been in committee since 2009. Geology paces itself and perhaps so do naming conventions. But it turns out there are at least 100 proposals for new minerals and their names submitted each year. To-date, more than 4700 species of minerals have been recognized.Qingsongite was named after Qingsong Fang (1939–2010), a professor at the Institute of Geology, the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, who found the first diamond in the Tibetan chromium-rich rocks in the late 1970s, and contributed to the discovery of four new mineral species. read more