Way beyond diamonds: A look at some of the rarest minerals in the world [View all]

[n2doc]

There are more than 5,000 known minerals on Earth, and most of them are much more rare than Valentine's Day diamonds.

After all, diamonds can be found in more than 700 locations around the world, and miners pull tons of them out of the ground each year.

Compare that to the beautiful Valentine's Day pink mineral cobaltomenite, which is found in just four places: Argentina, Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Utah.

Scientists say there is so little cobaltomenite on our planet that you could probably fit it all into a container the size of a shot glass.

Now that's a rare mineral.

In a paper to be published in American Mineralogist, two researchers present the first system for categorizing rarities in the mineral kingdom by suggesting four reasons that a mineral might be hard to find.

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http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-rare-minerals-20160213-story.html