Unearthing Earth's memory through rocks and minerals

Beyond their glittering facets and rugged textures, rocks and minerals hold the Earth's deepest memories: of stellar explosions, ancient oceans, and the forces that sculpted the continents. Having started on Tuesday, an exhibition at the Natural History Museum of China in Beijing invites visitors to decode these stories, unveiling a stunning collection that traces a line from the planet's violent beginnings to the dawn of human civilization and beyond.

Titled Treasure of Earth: Exquisite Minerals and Rocks, the exhibition presents more than 200 specimens and will run through Feb 1. Supported by the Inner Mongolia Museum of Natural History, it unfolds across four chapters exploring the science of minerals, the epic cycle of rocks, the mystery of meteorites, and the profound role minerals have played in human advancement, inviting audiences on a journey to uncover the secrets of the Earth's billion-year geological saga.

In her opening address, Xue Li, president of the Chinese Association of Natural Science Museums, said the event aligns with the strategic plan for "building a leading cultural powerhouse" outlined by the central government.

"Museums, as hallowed halls of national culture and key instruments for science popularization, bear the mission of nurturing the people through culture and education," Xue says, adding that the exhibition is a good example of improving public scientific literacy and promoting the concept of ecological civilization.

Wan Shilin, head of the Natural History Museum of China, welcomed guests by drawing a poetic parallel. "Just as a mountain glows by containing jade, and a river charms by embracing pearls," he says, "each specimen is a crystal of the Earth's pulse, a messenger traversing hundreds of millions of years, quietly yet powerfully narrating the great changes of our planet." Among the star exhibits is a striking tourmaline, or bixi, highlighted by Miao Yuyan, the museum's exhibition development director. Calling it a "treasure of the museum's collection", Miao says it captures the essence of the show.

"Its interior is a riot of colors, like a captured rainbow," she says, adding that complex mineral composition and varying trace elements like iron and manganese create its unique palette. "It's like a master colorist from nature."

Beyond its beauty, the tourmaline possesses some scientific properties. "It generates an electric charge when heated or pressed, even attracting dust, which is why it's also called the 'dust-collecting stone'," Miao adds.

The exhibition guides visitors through four thematic sections. The first, Myriad Forms of Crystal Structures, delves into the origins of minerals through interactive displays. The second, Whispers from Deep Time and Earth, explores the rock cycle and features meteorites as interstellar messengers.

The narrative then links geology to human progress in the third section Civilization's Flint, which traces our reliance on minerals from the Stone Age to modern technology. The finale, A Curated Selection of Rocks and Minerals, offers a visually stunning immersion, highlighted by a 420-million-year-old orthoceras fossil, a genus of extinct marine cephalopods that lived approximately 488 to 443 million years ago.

As its conclusion states, formed over hundreds of millions of years, these geological treasures are essential to key fields: they are the base materials for integrated circuits, core elements for clean energy technologies, and critical components for advanced industrial systems — all vital for a sustainable future for humanity. Celebrating the wonders and wisdom of nature, the exhibition calls for heightened public awareness of resource conservation.