Dear members and friends of the DMG,
Why did you decide to study geosciences (or mineralogy)? For me, my interest in the Earth was sparked as early as kindergarten and began with a fascination for the prehistoric planet—with dinosaurs and volcanoes—and the question of how life on Earth might have evolved. What was absolutely crucial for me as a child was the opportunity to search for and find fossils and minerals on my own—these little treasures formed a concrete link between the fascinating, colorful pictures in my dinosaur books and my own reality and the world around me. At the time, we lived in a suburb of Münster (Westphalia), where the forest paths were paved with overburden from the coal mines of the Ruhr region. So in the afternoons, armed with a hammer from my dad’s workshop and accompanied by friends or siblings, I would head into the nearby forest to chip away at the black clay stones. We found imprints of fern fronds, horsetail bark, and all sorts of other plants from the Carboniferous period. Some of these specimens are still on display in my showcase today, more than forty years later. Of course, they have little material value and are not of particular scientific interest, but for me, they sparked a lifelong fascination with exploring the origin and evolution of our planet.
A small, non-representative survey shows that similar childhood experiences sparked the interest and enthusiasm of many students and colleagues. It was often the opportunity to dig for fossils or minerals in a quarry or mine that led to the discovery of their first treasures and ignited their fascination with the geosciences. A specimen found by oneself is—at least for the finder—always much more valuable than one that’s been purchased, even if purchased specimens are often more magnificent and fetch much higher prices. The sentimental value and the experience of discovery cannot be overestimated. For children in particular, a few tiny grains of pyrite that they knock out of a piece of slate themselves bring more sparkle to their eyes than the largest crystal specimen in a museum display case.
I am now concerned about the steadily shrinking number of places where children have the opportunity to explore the world of rocks on their own, rummage around, and make their own discoveries. Active quarries are now almost always off-limits to the general public for insurance reasons, and abandoned quarries are either backfilled, restored to nature, designated as nature reserves, placed under UNESCO protection, or simply overgrown and weathered. This poses a significant obstacle for young, curious explorers and can only have a negative impact on the number of new students at universities in the medium term.
But of course, there are also rays of hope and wonderful initiatives that are addressing this issue by aiming to give the public access to the Earth. I would like to highlight four examples here that have been very successfully launched or implemented in recent years and have reached many (especially young) citizens.
At the University of Bonn, under the direction of Gösta Hoffmann, the multi-award-winning smartphone app “OutcropWizard” has been and continues to be developed; it now locates and describes more than 15,000 outcrops across Europe (https://outcropwizard.de). The app offers an interactive map where users can locate all kinds of geologically interesting sites—for example, to plan a family outing on the weekend. Included are, among other things, quarries, road outcrops, hot springs, visitor mines, viewpoints of geological interest, and open-air museums. The development of the app was supported by the Universities of Bonn and Aachen, the Klaus Tschira Foundation, and the DGGV. Users are encouraged to contribute to the further expansion of the app’s content themselves, so that interested laypeople can also share their discoveries with the community; in this way, the spirit of discovery is awakened in everyone. Over the past 25 years, the DMG has increasingly focused on the question of how to convey mineralogical educational content to the public and the next generation, and is actively working to bring this content into schools. The mileko project, initiated by Roland Stalder, has been a great success. These mineralogy teaching kits, available in various versions, are designed to introduce students to mineralogy topics in science classes through the specimens they contain (minerals, rocks, single crystals, and technical products). The mileko project is coordinated by the DMG’s Working Group for Schools and Higher Education and financially supported by the Alexander Tutsek Foundation (www.dmg-home.org/mineralogie/mineralogischer-lehrkoffer).
The Family Day (“Hands-On Geosciences”), organized by Bastian Joachim Mrosko and held on the Sunday at the start of each of the last two DMG annual conferences (GeoMinKöln2022 and MinWien2023), was similarly successful. These events drew four-digit attendance figures, and anyone who was there will remember the many enthusiastic children who crowded around the booths and were everywhere there were hands-on experiments. Particularly popular here was the station where children were allowed to discover and excavate minerals and fossils themselves (www.geominkoeln2022.de/geowissenschaften-zum-anfassen.html) and https://minwien2023.univie.ac.at/earthsciencesday.html). One of the attractions in Cologne and Vienna was the opportunity offered by Lutz Hecht and the Berlin Museum of Natural History to find real meteorites in ordinary city dust, which brings me to my fourth example.
Meteorites have always held a great fascination for people, as they stimulate curiosity and imagination as messengers from other worlds. Alongside volcanoes, gemstones, and dinosaurs, they are likely the most compelling attractions for our youngest generation. Most people are not fortunate enough to find a real meteorite on their own, and an active search usually requires traveling to remote corners of the Earth (sand or ice deserts). However, this applies only to larger pieces, while tiny meteorites with diameters of less than one millimeter are constantly raining down on Earth in large numbers. The micrometeorite project, initiated and led by Lutz Hecht, collects samples from the rooftops of Berlin and involves interested laypeople in the scientific work. After washing, sifting, and magnetic separation of the dust swept from the rooftops, manual sorting under a microscope is still required. The entire project is designed as a citizen science initiative and involves interested citizens of all ages, from sample collection and separation to the evaluation of results. In this project, too, the greatest fascination stems from the act of discovery itself, and a micrometeorite found by oneself is suddenly worth more than the largest polished specimen in a museum (www.museumfuernaturkunde.berlin/de/wissenschaft/berlin-sammelt-kosmischen-staub; see also GEOfokus in GMIT 84). Hopefully, these examples will serve as inspiration to participate in existing projects and perhaps also to emulate them or develop your own initiatives. If you have ideas of your own, the DMG, the DVGeo, and other geological societies offer opportunities to find support for an initiative. The professional societies are very interested in promoting the next generation of scientists and in communicating topics in mineralogy and the geosciences in general to the general public, and pursuing these goals is part of their statutory mission.
— Yours, Horst Marschall
