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Looking for a complete table of minerals for a database

Earth Science Asked by Phillip Allen on February 6, 2021

I am building an open source spatial geochemical/geological observational database for mineral exploration. I need to fill the mineral lookup table.

Where can I find a complete list of all minerals and mineral-groups, chemical formula, Strunz and/or Dana number, or any other data.

I want the Strunz and/or Dana numbers so I can query the data and recode the data based upon mineral groups.

2 Answers

There is probably no such thing as a totally comprehensive list of minerals because nobody agrees upon what constitutes a mineral, as opposed to a multiple variants of the same mineral. There is also a grey area between 'natural' and 'synthetic'.
That said, however, the international centre for diffraction data (i.e. for X-ray powder diffraction work) has a recent catalogue of minerals called PDF-4 +2015, which includes more than 365,000 entries! You may have to sift through the catalogue to determine which are genuinely natural minerals that you want in your own catalogue. The '-4' indicates actual minerals as opposed to pharmaceuticals etc, which are under a different catalogue. You can access their flyer from:

http://www.icdd.com/products/flyers/PDF-4plus.pdf

Answered by Gordon Stanger on February 6, 2021

After looking at the source from nrmima.nrm.se/IMA_Master_List_2016-03.pdf, I discovered the: IMA Database of Mineral Properties Created and maintained by the RRUFF Project in partnership with the IMA http://rruff.info/ima/

I downloaded all the minerals in a csv file. This worked very well for two reasons. First they had various chemical formula formats that were favorable for entry into a database. Second they had a mineral group column. The mineral group column was very important since often in the field the exact mineral is not noted but a group such as chlorite or garnet. I will worry about Strunz or Dana numbers/codes at a later date.

Answered by Phillip Allen on February 6, 2021

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