Island scientists finds new mineral
Working with a team of scientists, Alan Benimoff, who teaches at CSI, made discovery

Staten Island Advance
Wednesday, March 24, 2004

It wasn't a rocket scientist who recently discovered a new mineral formed more than a billion years ago.

It was Dr. Alan Benimoff, a rock scientist -- otherwise known as a geoscientist -- from the College of Staten Island, Willowbrook, working in collaboration with five colleagues from elite universities located in California, Italy and Germany.

"This has been my most rewarding project," says Benimoff, who's been with the university for 37 years. A pin on his suit jacket's lapel shows he is also a 25-year member of the prestigious Mineralogical Association of America.

The discovery -- unusually pink in color, he notes -- has been named parvo-mangano-edenite by the Commission on New Minerals and Mineral Names (CNMMN) and the International Mineralogical Association (IMA), approving its classification as a new manganese-rich mineral.

Benimoff, a Willowbrook resident and the executive secretary for the New York State Geological Association, found the mineral during a field trip in 1978 to the Gouverneur Talc Company, located upstate.

However, he didn't start analyzing the specimen until 1986, two years after he received his Ph.D. in geology from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pa.

Six months ago -- nearly two decades after he first began the painstaking research process -- Benimoff had a major breakthrough. He ran its composition through a specialized computer database that lists all known minerals and found no match.

That's when he knew he had something uncommon in his possession.

The new mineral is an amphibole, Benimoff says, meaning it consists of double chains of silicon and oxygen molecules joined to manganese and iron, as well as other ions.

"Being a geologist is like being a detective," says Benimoff, who often equates his work to that of the investigators on "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," the popular CBS TV show. Similar to the drama's characters, he too works long hours -- sometimes 80 a week -- and dedicates lots of time to examining minute details.

He says his familiarity with mathematics, physics and chemistry -- he earned an associate's degree in engineering science from the former Richmond Community College, St. George -- gave him a solid foundation from which to work.

Benimoff distinguished the new mineral compound from countless others with similar compositions by using X-ray diffraction equipment, which essentially creates a "fingerprint" of inorganic matter.

Film lines a circular canister in which powder from the mineral is placed on a glass fiber. X-rays are shot into the canister through tubes, and the film captures the diffracted images.

"The pattern on film is a reflection of the mineral's atomic structure," Benimoff explains.

The mineral is unique because it has 10 percent manganese content versus only 0.3 percent iron content, he said. So much manganese compared to so little iron is 'peculiar' for an amphibole of this variety, he says.

"It was most likely formed in the sea and metamorphosed by tectonic plate movement 1.1 billion years ago," according to Benimoff, during what geologists refer to as the Grenville Mountain Building Episode.

Its discovery adds supporting evidence to the theory that the upstate area northeast of Lake Ontario in St. Lawrence County was once covered by sub-tropical shallow seas, asserts the geoscientist.

Benimoff says he and the team of geoscientists hope that further study of parvo-mangano-edenite will provide them with more clues of the Pre-Cambrian Era, an era long before dinosaurs walked the Earth, when only amoebas -- simple, single-celled organisms -- existed.

"Dr. Benimoff's discovery is a shining example of the college's prominence in scholarly pursuits," says Marlene Springer, president of the college. "We are justly proud of this significant contribution to the world of science."

Samples of the newly identified mineral will become part of the collections of the State Museum of New York and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.

"This work is what I live for," he says. He next plans to inspect a pile of about two dozen rocks sitting on a cabinet in his office. He smiles while relishing the possibility that one could hold another unknown mineral just waiting to be discovered.