Davemaoite – CaSiO3-perovskite as mineral from the lower mantle


Oliver Tschauner1, Shichun Huang1, Shuying Yang2, Munir Humayun3, Wenjun Liu3, Stephanie Gilbert Corder4, Hans A. Bechtel4, 
Margarita I. Novgorodova3, George R. Rossman5, 


1 Department of Geoscience, University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA 2 National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and Department of Earth, Ocean & Atmospheric Science,
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32310, USA
3 Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory,
Lemont, IL 60439, USA		 4 Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
5 Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences  
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, CA  91125-2500, USA

ABSTRACT

Here, we report the discovery of CaSiO3-perovskite as a mineral approved by the Commission of New Minerals, Nomenclature, and Classification (CNMNC) of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA). The new mineral (IMA2020-012a7) is named davemaoite in honour of Dave (Ho-kwang) Mao for his eminent contributions in the field of deep mantle geophysics and petrology. The type material, inclusions in a diamond from Orapa, Botswana, is deposited in the Natural History Museum Los Angeles (catalogue number NHMLA 74541, formerly GRR1518 of the Caltech mineral collection).

Orapa Diamond
A diamond from Orapa that is similar to the one in which inclusions of davemaoite were discovered.