Commercial mining permanently removes vast volumes of rock from Earth’s crust. How can we strategically collect and document these geological materials to safeguard their scientific value for future generations? A retrospective look at samples gathered in the past.
Kommerzieller Bergbau entfernt dauerhaft große Gesteinsmengen aus der Erdkruste. Wie können wir diese geologischen Materialien strategisch sammeln und dokumentieren, um ihren wissenschaftlichen Wert für zukünftige Generationen zu bewahren? Eine Rückschau auf in der Vergangenheit gesammelte Proben.
One mid-sized mountain per year
Whether you will be reading this blog on your phone, a tablet, or a desktop computer screen, there will be several tenths of grams of rare earth elements, copper, and other heavy metals involved in the background technology enabling you to read it. Many of these elements are in high demand in industry – not only because they enable your phone to function, but also because they are crucial for infrastructure development of modern cities and for transitioning from a fossil fuel-based economy towards more sustainable alternatives [1]. The high demand for these metals in industry has led to a situation in which more minerals are being mined than ever before. In 2024, mining industry analysts estimated that there were around 20,000 active commercial mine sites worldwide, collectively responsible for the extraction of several tens of billions of metric tons of rock in a single year [2,3]. That is roughly equivalent to the volume of a mid-sized mountain such as the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest peak.
Commercial mine sites offer geologists exciting opportunities to study outcrops and collect rock samples that would otherwise remain inaccessible, as these rocks would not naturally be exposed at the Earth’s surface. However, the time window for collecting such samples is limited. By definition, commercial mining involves the excavation and processing of rocks for metal extraction. As a result, many geologically interesting rocks have already been permanently removed from the Earth’s crust (e.g., Fig. 1). While the loss of biodiversity from Earth’s surface environments has become a widely discussed topic in science and politics in 2025, the loss of geodiversity has received comparatively little attention.

Past, present, and future of ore deposits in institute collections
As a curator at the Museum of Nature Hamburg, it is my job to safeguard a collection of 90,000 rocks and mineral samples and make them available for geoscientific research and education. But I am also passionate about preserving geodiversity for future generations of geoscientists. Given the current boom in the mining industry, I am particularly interested in collecting samples from ore deposits that are at risk of being lost to science forever. But how can we collect these samples in a way that allows future generations of scientists to make full use of them? Can we establish or improve a collection strategy by studying how ore deposits were sampled in the past, and by reflecting on how these samples were used for scientific research since?
With these questions in mind, I have studied the inventories of ore collections based at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences (University of Cambridge) and at the Museum of Nature Hamburg (Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change). Perhaps not surprisingly, I found that samples and their corresponding documentation frequently reflect the scientific Zeitgeist of the time when they were collected. For example, historic ore specimens collected in the 19th century often exhibit mineralogical peculiarities and are accompanied by descriptions of crystal forms and habitus types, but lack any geospatial information about where the samples were taken (e.g., Fig. 2a). Ore specimens collected later, in contrast, especially those gathered in the context of ore prospecting activities, tend to be more representative of local geology and are typically accompanied by geospatial information and genetic interpretations of the ore deposits (e.g., Fig. 2b). These different approaches to sampling at distinct points in history illustrate how geosciences evolved from a primarily descriptive science focused on cataloguing rocks and minerals 150 years ago, to a spectrum of hypothesis-driven geoscientific disciplines as we know them today.


Ore samples such as the specimen from the historic Carne collection in Fig. 2a still hold value for contemporary geoscientific research, particularly in the field of mineralogy. However, many other subdisciplines of geoscience increasingly rely on geological context and geospatial data. More recent samples with a higher degree of contextual documentation, such as the gold conglomerate sample shown in Fig. 2b, consequently tend to offer greater utility for addressing contemporary questions in geoscientific research, such as how the formation of ore minerals can be linked to tectonic or volcanic activity in a particular geological setting, and how tectonic and magmatic processes evolved over time. Placing ourselves in the shoes of a 19th century geoscience curator, this realisation reminds us that we cannot foresee the full range of scientific objectives future researchers may pursue. So how can we ensure that we do not miss out on crucial sample information and miss key sampling strategies for future research, when we incorporate new samples from ore deposits into our collection?
The Apollo samples as a precedent
Inspiration for answering these questions might come from an unexpected corner of the Solar System. During the era of the Apollo programme (1961–1972), NASA astronauts sampled approximately 380 kg of rocks and soils on the Moon. These samples were collected with few specific scientific objectives at the time, but with the clear intention that they should serve future generations of geoscientists – much like the purpose for which I argue ore deposits should be sampled today. During the Apollo programme, samples were therefore taken from a diverse suite of geological settings on the Moon, and each sample was photographed in situ before collection, labelled with precise geospatial coordinates, and was meticulously documented with notes on orientation and surrounding features (Fig. 3). Some samples were even sealed, frozen, or stored in vacuum or helium in vials that were first opened 50 years later [5]. Today, more than half a century since the Apollo missions, we know that this sampling approach has paid off: Geoscientists have made extensive use of the Apollo sample suite and continue to do so, often using analytical techniques that did not yet exist during the era of the Apollo programme. For example, the Moon was long considered bone-dry until, in the late 2000s, advanced analytical techniques revealed traces of water in Apollo samples that had previously remained undetectable. This finding fundamentally reshaped our understanding of the Moon’s formation, several decades after the samples were collected.

Collecting data beyond the object
In practice, curators of academic collections do not have the resources to implement an Apollo-style strategy for curating rock samples, particularly when aiming to sample many of the active mining sites around the world. But the success of the Apollo missions can serve as a reminder to collect and curate as much contextual information as possible alongside new ore samples. The most challenging aspect of this approach would be to record field information that seems scientifically irrelevant at present, but which might become important for research in the (far) future. This could include seemingly mundane details such as weather conditions, background mineral assemblages, or even logistical constraints during sampling.
As a concluding reflection, it is somewhat ironic to look to the Apollo programme’s lunar sampling practices as inspiration for preserving Earth’s geodiversity. New sample return missions to the Moon will likely take place in the upcoming decades, theoretically allowing robotic landers and astronauts to revisit and resample rocks from the original Apollo landing sites. By contrast, rocks from ore deposits on Earth, once excavated and processed for metal extraction, can never be sampled again. If these materials are not systematically incorporated into academic ore collections at present, together with the appropriate contextual information, they risk being lost to science and education forever.
Bibliography
[1] Gielen, D. (2021). Critical minerals for the energy transition. International Renewable Energy Agency, Abu Dhabi.
[2] Jasansky, S., Lieber, M., Giljum, S., & Maus, V. (2023). An open database on global coal and metal mine production. Scientific data, 10(1), 52.
[3] Reichl, C., & Schatz, M. (2024). World Mining Data 2024. Federal Ministry of Finance, Austria.
[4] Pegg, C. W. (1950). A contribution to the geology of the West Rand area. South African Journal of Geology, 53(1), 209-224.
[5] Shearer, C. K. et al. & ANGSA science team. (2024). Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA): An Apollo participating scientist program to prepare the lunar sample community for Artemis. Space Science Reviews, 220(6), 62.
Stefan Peters leads a research group, curates a collection of over 90,000 rocks and minerals, and manages a 500 m² exhibition area at the Museum of Nature Hamburg – Mineralogy. He is also a guest lecturer in geochemistry at the University of Hamburg. In 2024, he was a Leibniz-Cambridge Museum & Collection Fellow at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge.
Title picture: A copper mine in Sweden, LOP Project.





















































