Group 12 element by mass, and even the leanest concentrated deposits are at least 0.1% mercury (12,000 times average crustal abundance). It is found either as a native metal (rare) or in cinnabar (HgS), corderoite, livingstonite and other minerals, with cinnabar being the most common ore. While mercury and zinc minerals are found in large enough quantities to be mined, cadmium is too similar to zinc and therefore is always present in small quantities in zinc ores from where it is recovered. Identified world zinc resources total about 1.9 billion tonnes. Large deposits are in Australia, Canada and the United States with the
Sulphur Bank Mine tin ore. Oxland believed the cinnabar ore at Sulphur Bank had been formed from hot springs. His thesis stated that hot springs brought metals in a dissolved state from igneous rock deep in the earth through a thick block of metamorphised ancient seabed to form cinnabar ore near the surface of the mine. Oxland also believed the cinnabar deposit was continually forming. Becker came to agree with the Oxland thesis. There were a number of mysteries about the Sulphur Bank that Becker attempted to solve. Among them was how sulfur had been delivered to the surface of the mine and