“A few months ago I promised to write a series of posts documenting the world’s lost materials. I was quite excited about it; over time I was hoping to build up a catalogue of all of those substances humanity once used to mine and extract from the earth’s crust, but have now been exhausted.

All of which is why it’s about time I informed you, dear readers, that I failed. After a single post (Malachite) I’m taking the decision to retire the Lost Materials series. Why? Because in trying to hunt around for minerals we have run out of, I came to an unexpected conclusion. So far, we haven’t really, meaningfully run out of, well, pretty much anything.”

From Material World.