Minerals discovered in massive meteorites have never been seen before on Earth.

A huge meteorite discovered in Somalia in 2020 is hiding what researchers call an “extraordinary” discovery — two new minerals, and possibly a third, never before seen on Earth.

The minerals were discovered from a 70-gram fragment of the 15.2-tonne “El Ali” meteorite, which locals had known about for five to seven generations but was officially discovered only two years ago. Researchers at the University of Alberta analyzed the fragment to find two minerals — one they named alleleite The meteor And the other is named after Lindy Elkins-Tanton, vice president of Arizona State University’s Interplanetary Initiative and a principal investigator on NASA’s Psyche mission.

A third newly discovered mineral is also likely, the University of Alberta said. News for the newspaperand it is possible to find even more.

University of Alberta professor and meteorite collection curator Chris Heard, along with Andrew Lowcock, head of the university’s electron microprobe laboratory, helped make the identification.

“The very first day he did some analysis, he said, ‘You’ve got at least two new minerals there,'” Hurd said in a press release. “It was unusual. Most of the time it takes a lot more work to say there’s a new mineral.”

And it’s all a happy accident. Hurd said in a presentation of the findings Space Research Symposium Last week that they had “stumbled upon” the new mineral.

“We didn’t go looking for new minerals, we just went to find them,” he said.

This easy identification was made possible by their man-made versions that matched the composition. Now, research on these minerals will continue – and with the hope that their discovery can spark new uses in the scientific, and everyday, world.

“That’s my specialty — how do you tease out the geological processes and how do you tease out the geological history of the asteroid that this rock was once a part of,” Hurd said. “I never thought I’d be involved in describing a whole new mineral just because of working on a meteorite.”

However, work on meteorites can be limited to the single sample they obtained. Heard said the rest of the meteorite may have been transported to China to be sold, and it is unclear if researchers will be able to obtain more samples.