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| Qingsongite is a recently discovered mineral. Coesite and osbornite are also ultra-high pressure minerals. |
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Geologists at the University of California, Riverside have discovered a new mineral, cubic boron nitride, which they have named “qingsongite.”
The discovery, made in 2009, was officially approved this week by the International Mineralogical Association.
The UC Riverside geologists, Larissa Dobrzhinetskaya and Harry Green in the Department of Earth Sciences, were joined by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the University of Maine and from institutions in China and Germany in making the discovery.
“The uniqueness of qingsongite is that it is the first boron mineral that was found to be formed at extreme conditions in deep Earth,” Dobrzhinetskaya said. “All other known boron minerals are found at Earth’s surface.”
