What were the years of operation of the mine that a novel group of acidophilic archaea found at?
Archaeal Richmond Mine acidophilic nanoorganisms Archaeal Richmond Mine acidophilic nanoorganisms (ARMAN) were first discovered in an extremely acidic mine located in northern California (Richmond Mine at Iron Mountain) by Brett Baker in Jill Banfield's laboratory at the University of California Berkeley. These novel groups of archaea named ARMAN-1, ARMAN-2 ("Candidatus" Micrarchaeum acidiphilum ARMAN-2 ), and ARMAN-3 were missed by previous PCR-based surveys of the mine community because the ARMANs have several mismatches with commonly used PCR primers for 16S rRNA genes. Baker "et al." detected them in a later study using shotgun sequencing of the community. The three groups were originally thought to represent three unique lineages deeply branched within the Euryarchaeota, a subgroup of the Archaea. However, this has been revised, based on more complete archaeal genomic tree, that they belong to a super phylum named DPANN. The ARMAN groups now comprise deeply divergent phyla named Micrarchaeota and Parvarchaeota. Their 16S rRNA genes differ by as much as 17% between the three groups. Prior to their discovery all of the Archaea shown to be associated with Iron Mountain belonged to the order Thermoplasmatales (e.g., "Ferroplasma acidarmanus").
Cannington Mine The Cannington Silver and Lead Mine is an Australian underground mine located in north-west Queensland, in the Shire of McKinlay, about 200 km southeast of Mount Isa. The deposit was discovered by Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP) in 1990. Although sitework and underground mining began in 1997, full production was not achieved until early 1999, with 1.5 million tons of ore processed in 1999. Production since has reached 3 million tons of ore per year. s of 2010 it was the largest and lowest cost silver and lead mine in the world. The expected life of the Cannington mine is 25 years. On August 19, 2014, the mine's owner BHP Billiton announced it was splitting the company in two. A newly formed entity called South32 is to house BHP Billiton's non-core businesses including the Cannington Mine. South32 is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (under the code S32), with a secondary listing in Johannesburg.