Ed Grew to lead panel on garnet nomenclature
Research Professor Edward Grew, now in his 27th year at the University of Maine, was recently selected to chair the Subcommittee on Garnet Nomenclature for the International Mineralogical Association-Commission on New Minerals, Mineral Names and Classification (http://pubsites.uws.edu.au/ima-cnmnc/). The task of the subcommittee is to review existing nomenclature of the 32 approved species of garnets and closely related minerals, ten of which were discovered in the last year and a half. One of those recent discoveries, menzerite-(Y), was by former Ph.D. student Jeffrey Marsh, now a postdoc at the University of Texas – Austin, and described by Grew, Marsh, and others in 2010.
Due to its prevalence and chemical and mechanical properties, garnet is one of the most used minerals in interpreting petrological and microstructural aspects of rock histories. The garnet supergroup includes not only the familiar species almandine, pyrope, grossular, andradite and spessartine, but also species containing uranium, antimony and tin, elements not usually present in garnet. The subcommittee will be proposing a classification and procedure for recognizing species. The subcommittee currently is composed of 7 members representing Russia, Sweden, Australia and Canada as well as the U.S.