Minerals discovered in Poland – a review

The use and processing of minerals including native metals goes back more than 5,000 years when people started using native copper to make various tools. Special attention was also given to coloured crystals which were believed to have magical powers. The earliest references to minerals are found in an ancient Egyptian papyrus, the Indian Vedas, Aristotle’s works, Theophrastus’s “On Stones”, and the writings of Pliny the Elder (Povarennykh 1972). From the pre-history, through the first two decades of the 20^th century, there were many researchers, the geniuses of their times, like Leonardo da Vinci, Acricola, Konrad Gesner, Jean Babtiste Louise Rome, Abraham Gottlob Werner, Georges-Louis Leclers and many others whose works significantly contributed to the development of mineral studies (Hazen 1984; Schuh 2007). Obviously, mineralogy as a science and the concept of minerals did not exist then. Minerals were described based on their physical properties (e.g. colour, lustre, transparency, hardness, etc.) and practical uses. With the invention of a polarizing microscope and later X-rays, it became possible to characterize the optical properties of the minerals and their atomic structure. The current, crystal, and chemical stage of development of mineralogy, achieved due to the application of analytical techniques such as electron microprobe, transmission electron microscopy, scanning transmission electron microscopy, and different spectroscopic and diffraction methods, has raised our understanding of the nature of minerals to an entirely new level. The new millennium brought a breakthrough in imagining technology and enabled mineralogists to investigate mineral phases at the micro down to nanoscales (Nieto, Livi 2013). All this has resulted in a relatively rapid expansion not only of the list of known mineral species but also of data on their genesis, stability ranges, and alterations. This in turn, frequently inspires scientists to make laboratory-grown crystals with a purpose for various advanced technologies including nanotechnology. Today Earth boasts 5988 known minerals (https://rruff.info/ima/; November 2023) found both in terrestrial and extraterrestrial materials with about 100-150 new species approved every year.

Some minerals have been given their names long ago, before the dawn of history, and several of them have survived in their original form up to the present day. Since the establishment of the Commission of New Minerals and Mineral Names (CNMMN) of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA) in 1959, new mineral names have been strictly controlled. The publication of new mineral names and the description of new phases requires the approval of CNMMN (Selley et al. 2005). The International Mineralogical Association was founded by a group of mineralogists at a meeting in Madrid in 1958. Later, the CNMMN as one of the eight commissions was founded in 1959 (De Fourestier 2002). Whereas, the Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification (CNMNC) was formed in 2006 by a merger between the Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names and the Commission on Classification of Minerals. Currently, it is the body in charge of approval of new minerals and deals with all issues related to the status of mineral species. On the website of CNMNC, there is a list of IMA-approved minerals, which is regularly updated (http://cnmnc.units.it/). Since the early beginning of the CNMMN/CNMNC, Poland has been represented therein by its representatives with a casting vote: i.e. Tadeusz Wieser (1960-1962), Andrzej Bolewski (1962-1988), Andrzej Manecki (1988-2019), and currently Adam Pieczka (2019-…). The CNMNC is one of the most active commissions in the IMA these days. Every month the votes for or against new mineral species are cast by e-mails. The list of current Commission members is accessed on the IMA CNMNC website (http://cnmnc.units.it/). This pretty large body, in the case of proposals for new minerals, approves in the separate votes the proposed new mineral species, and its name. The Commission also deals with discreditations, redefinitions, or the revalidation of previously discredited individual species, as well as their nomenclature and classification. Normally, each representative of the CNMNC has 60 days to vote (Yes/No/Abstain) on the new mineral proposal, each of which is given its own IMA number upon receipt.

The proposal for the creation and naming of the new species requires a complete description of the mineral including (1) occurrence with associated minerals and origin of the mineral, (2) appearance and physical properties, (3) other properties, (4) optical properties, (5) chemical data, (6) crystallography, (7) name, (8) type material, (9) relation to other species, (10) compatibility, (11) references, (12) authors’ remarks. Typically, a complete proposal includes a dozen to 20 pages of text, tables, and figures, along with an attached CIF (Crystal Information File) and checkcif, which is a printout from programs that check the data contained in the CIF. For the proposal to be approved it must achieve a minimum of 2/3 positive votes, with ‘No’ and ‘Abstain’ votes adding up. Additionally, even in the case of a positive vote, some significant comments raised by the commission members on the composition or structure of the proposed mineral may withhold its approval until they are fully addressed by the authors of the proposal. After the approval of the new mineral, the authors usually publish their works in high-rank, peer-reviewed mineralogical journals like American Mineralogist, Mineralogical Magazine, European Journal of Mineralogy, or others. At this stage, the manuscript again goes through the peer review process; two independent, mineralogists and one crystallographer assess it for its originality and validity. While, if approved the specimen providing this information becomes the type specimen for the species and is the specimen to which all subsequent descriptions of the mineral from other localities should be later compared (Selley et al. 2005).

The authors of the original description of new species have the prerogative of the naming of valid, IMA-approved minerals. However, the proposed name must also be approved by the CNMNC. The names of mineral phases have different derivations, sometimes it is the geographic locality of discovery (e.g. moraskoite, szklaryite, etc), a particular characteristic of the mineral (e.g. scandio-winchite, magnesio-dutrowite, etc.) and the name of the well-known mineralogists, who the authors want to honour this way (e.g. żabińskiite, maneckiite, heflikite, etc. dedicated to Polish Mineralogists - Witold Żabiński, Andrzej Manecki, Wiesław Heflik). It is necessary to justify the name of the new species and obtain consent for that in the case of a living person. It should be noted that the CNMNC understands that a person’s entire surname is treated as the root name of the new mineral name to which the ending – ite is added. In 2022 out of the 146 new mineral proposals submitted, 83 (^~57%) were mineral species named after people usually associated with the earth sciences (scholars, collectors, curators of museum collections, etc.), 37 (^~25%) referred to their chemical composition, 18 (^~13%) after geographic names corresponding to type localities, and 8 (^~5%) after names representing other categories.

In the total number of 5988 minerals approved by the IMA (http://cnmnc.units.it/; November 2023) there is also a long list of species found in Poland under its current borders, i.e. these for which Poland is the type locality (Table 1). Of the 34 minerals, six were described exclusively by foreign authors (nos. 1-4, 11, and 12, Table 1). The first four are so-called grandfathered minerals, recognized and included in the minerals kingdom in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, well before the CNMMN was founded. Minerals nos. 5-10 come from the period of intensive development of domestic mineralogical sciences since the early 1960s. At that time some Polish scientific institutes and universities were equipped with modern apparatus which enabled them to conduct research on a relatively good level and initiate international cooperation. This was also a period of reorganization of mineralogical sciences in Poland that resulted in the establishment of the Mineralogical Society of Poland (PTMin). Then, a time gap of about 25 years without any discovery of new minerals, has been interpreted as scientific equipment limitations, especially in the field of microchemical and structural analyses, caused by poor funding of any research. In the early years of the 21^st century, a breakthrough occurred in two academic centres, i.e. AGH University of Krakow and the University of Silesia, which was possibly related to the purchase of a Cameca SX 100 electron microprobe by the University of Warsaw and the formation the Inter-Institute Analytical Complex for Minerals and Synthetic Substances. The cooperation of mineralogists from Polish academic centres, i.e. the University of Silesia, the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, the University of Wrocław, and AGH University of Krakow led to the approval of moraskoite and czochralskiite - two new phosphate minerals from the Morasko meteorite (nos. 16 and 19, Table 1). Adam Pieczka from AGH University of Krakow in cooperation with foreign scientists succeeded in the IMA approval of nioboholtite (Fig. 1A,B), titanoholtite, szklaryite, and then lepageite (nos. 13-15 and 27, Table 1). Later on, the team led by Adam Pieczka was strengthened by academics of the Universities of Silesia, Warsaw, and Wrocław, which resulted in the approval of pilawite-(Y), bohseite, żabińskiite (nos. 17, 18 and 20, Table 1). In turn, maneckiite, silesiaite, graftonite-Ca, and graftonite-Mn (nos. 21, 23-25, Table 1, Fig. 1 C,D) are species discovered exclusively by mineralogists from AGH University of Krakow.

Figure 1.

Later on, in 2018 and 2019, borzęckiite (no. 26, Table 1) and thalliomelane (no. 28, Table 1) were approved with proposals prepared by international teams led by Rafał Siuda (Warsaw University) and Bożena Gołębiowska (AGH), respectively. The proficiency in extracting crystals from rock matrix aimed at structural studies by single-crystal X-ray diffraction method enabled Polish mineralogists to work nearly independently from foreign scholars (except for LA-ICP-MS analyses still done by foreign laboratories), and resulted in the approval of new minerals, i.e. parafiniukite, silesiaite, kozłowskiite, scandio-winchite, beryllocordierite-Na, beryllosachanbinskiite-Na, heflikite and magnesio-dutrowite (nos. 22 and 29-34, Table 1, Fig. 1E-H).

The number of minerals found in Poland (34 species on the IMA list) seems to be quite impressive. Though, the USA, Russia, and China are undisputable leaders in the discovery of new minerals in their huge territories. European countries such as Italy, the Czech Republic, France, and Germany have also several times more new minerals found in their own areas than those we can be proud of. However, each discovery of new minerals is a great scientific achievement and celebration of mineralogy. The description of new, sometimes rare mineral phases provides more information about mineral-forming environments and the processes that favour the formation of such minerals in the lithosphere or deeper regions of Earth’s crust or in space (e.g. Hazen 1984; Schuh 2007; Karwowski et al. 2016; Pieczka et al. 2019). The new phases can be the carriers of critical metals or other strategic elements (e,g, Nb+Ta: nioboholtite, żabińskiite; Tl: thalliomelane; Sc: scandio-winchite, heflikite) sought for applications in various Hi-Tech industries (https:// artsandculture.google.com/story/minerals-in-modern-technology/NwJyXJ5v2kQnLg). Sometimes these new phases have unique properties, and their recognition in nature has made their applications in modern technology and industry, while the scarcity of these natural compounds has led to the need for their synthesis on a large scale, e.g. synthetic garnet- or pyrochlore-type compounds for electronics (e.g. Cheng et al. 2020; Goumri-Said et al. 2023). This is of great importance, especially in an era when many raw materials are running out, while they are critical for the development, or perhaps even the existence of certain branches of modern industries, which determine technological progress and the development of the population of the world.