47-13 Arrows, Cycles, and Trees: Peter Heaney and the Search for Mineral Evolution Metaphors

Session: Minerals in Motion: Tracking Mineral Reactions Using In Situ and Synchrotron Techniques, A Celebration of the Career of Peter Heaney

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Abstract:

The 4.6-billion-year history of changes in Earth’s mineral diversity and distribution provides a robust, comprehensively documented example of an abiotic evolving system. As in evolution of other domains, including elements, organic molecules, life, and social and technological systems, minerals began simply with a score of stellar minerals. New minerals emerged through a sequence of physical, chemical, and ultimately biological processes. Stage by stage, minerals diversified through a congruent path, each stage adding complexity to what came before—a history that has led to the more than 6000 approved mineral species today.

As exemplified by the research of Peter Heaney [1], the evolution of minerals can be framed using a range of metaphors, each of which captures an aspect of change through time. The uni-directional increase in diversity of Earth’s minerals through geological history suggests an “arrow of time”—a characteristic of many evolving systems that begin simply and exhibit an inexorable increase in structural and chemical complexity.

Minerals also display cycles in time as they evolve. From daily hot/cold and wet/dry cycles to longer-term effects of gradual glaciation/deglaciation and episodic bolide impacts, many minerals form, degrade, and form anew, over and over again.  

Superimposed on the arrow and cycles of mineral evolution, Heaney (in his MSA Presidential Address of 2016) also recognized a tree-like organization of diversifying mineral species—a hierarchical framing based on chemistry and structure that is underscored by the Dana system of mineral classification.

Today, in the complementary “Evolutionary System of Mineralogy” [2], the diversity, distribution, and formation processes of minerals are often represented by unipartite and bipartite networks, which link each of ~6000 mineral species to associated species or modes of formation, much like connections in a social network. Thus, network graphs of the evolution and co-occurrence of minerals provide a new metaphor for mineral evolution--multi-dimensional interactive visualizations that simultaneously incorporate arrows, cycles, and trees.

[1] P. J. Heaney (2016) Time’s arrow in the trees of life and minerals. American Mineralogist, 101, 1027-1035; [2] R. M.Hazen,  S. M. Morrison, and A. Prabhu (2023) The evolution of mineral evolution. In: L. Bindi and G. Cruciani [Eds.], Celebrating the International Year of Mineralogy. NY: Springer, pp.15-37.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-6633

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