Hard copy version of our paper applying concepts of rarity in biology to rarity in geology published: American Mineralogist, June 2016; 101 (6) Invited Centennial Article
On the nature and significance of rarity in mineralogy
Robert M. Hazen, Jesse H. Ausubel
American Mineralogist, v. 101, i. 6, p. 1245-1251, Published on June 2016, First Published on June 02, 2016, doi:10.2138/am-2016-5601CCBY
Where did petroleum come from? How did it form? When? These are the first few questions the great scientist Dmitri Mendeleev asked in the chapter “On the origins of petroleum” in his book “Petroleum industry in Pennsylvania and Caucasus“. The year was 1877, 120 years after Mikhail Lomonosov pronounced that oil is a fossil fuel.
We are happy to post Veselin Kostov’s translation of this chapter together with a list of references on the abiogenic theory of petroleum origin (wherever our limited knowledge of Russian interrupted the continuous flow of Mendeleev’s thoughts and ideas, we’ve put XXX or ??). We leave to the reader to decide which theory holds more merit.