Abstract—The chemical diversity of minerals can be analyzed in terms of the concept of mineral systems based on the set of chemical elements that are essential for defining a mineral species. Only species-defining elements are considered to be essential. According to this approach, all minerals are classified into ten types of mineral systems with the number of essential components ranging from 1 to 10. For all known minerals, only 70 chemical elements act as essential species-defining constituents. Using this concept of mineral systems, various geological objects may be compared from the viewpoint of their mineral diversity: for example, alkali massifs (Khibiny and Lovozero in Russia; Mont Saint Hilaire in Canada), evaporite deposits (Inder in Kazakhstan and Searles Lake in the United States), fumaroles of active volcanoes (Tolbachik in Kamchatka and Vulcano in Sicily, Italy), and hydrothermal deposits (Otto Mountain in the United States and El Dragon in Bolivia). Correlations between chemical and structural complexities of the minerals were analyzed using a total of 5240 datasets on their chemical compositions and 3989 datasets on their crystal structures. The statistical analysis yields strong and positive correlations (R² > 0.95) between chemical and structural complexities and the number of different chemical elements in a mineral. The analysis of relationships between chemical and structural complexities provides strong evidence for the overall trend of a greater structural complexity at a higher chemical complexity. Following R. Hazen, four groups of minerals representing four mineral evolution stages have been considered: (I) “Ur-minerals,” (II) minerals from chondrite meteorites, (III) Hadean minerals, and (IV) contemporary minerals. According to the obtained data, the number of species-defining elements in minerals and their average contents increase regularly and significantly from stage I to stage IV. The analyzed average chemical and structural complexities in these four groups demonstrate that both are gradually increasing in the course of mineral evolution. The increasing complexity follows an overall trend: the more complex minerals were formed in the course of geological time, without replacing the simpler ones. The observed correlations between chemical and structural complexities understood in terms of the Shannon information suggest that chemical differentiation is the major force that drives the increase of mineral complexity over the course of geological time.

摘要-可以根据矿物系统的概念来分析矿物的化学多样性，这些概念基于对定义矿物种类必不可少的化学元素集。仅定义物种的元素被认为是必不可少的。根据这种方法，所有矿物被分为十类矿物系统，其基本成分的数量在1到10之间。对于所有已知的矿物，只有70种化学元素可以作为必需的物种定义成分。使用矿物系统的概念，可以从矿物多样性的角度比较各种地质对象：例如，碱块（俄罗斯的Khibiny和Lovozero；加拿大的Mont Saint Hilaire），蒸发矿床（哈萨克斯坦的Inder和美国的Searles Lake）美国），活火山的火山口（堪察加的托尔巴比奇和意大利的西西里岛的伏尔卡诺），以及热液矿床（美国的奥托山和玻利维亚的埃尔龙）。使用总共5240个化学成分的数据集和3989个晶体结构的数据集，分析了矿物的化学和结构复杂性之间的相关性。统计分析得出强正相关（R ²> 0.95）在矿物的化学和结构复杂性与不同化学元素的数量之间。化学和结构复杂性之间的关系分析为有较高化学复杂性的更大结构复杂性的总体趋势提供了有力的证据。在R. Hazen之后，已经考虑了代表四个矿物演化阶段的四类矿物：（I）“矿物质”，（II）球粒陨石矿物，（III）Hadean矿物和（IV）当代矿物。根据获得的数据，矿物质中元素定义元素的数量及其平均含量从第一阶段到第四阶段有规律地显着增加。分析的这四个组的平均化学和结构复杂性表明，两者在矿物演化过程中都在逐渐增加。复杂性的增加遵循着总体趋势：在地质时期内形成了更复杂的矿物，而没有取代简单的矿物。根据香农信息了解到的化学和结构复杂性之间的相关关系表明，化学差异是驱动矿物复杂性随地质时间增加的主要力量。