Native metal brass, bronze, pewter, German silver, osmiridium, electrum, white gold, and silver-mercury and gold-mercury amalgam. Only gold, silver, copper and the platinum metals occur in nature in large amounts. Over geological time scales, very few metals can resist natural weathering processes like oxidation, which is why generally only the less reactive metals such as gold and platinum are found as native metals. The others usually occur as isolated pockets where a natural chemical process reduces a common compound or ore of the metal, leaving the pure metal behind as small flakes or inclusions. Non-metallic elements occurring in the native state include
Lateritic nickel ore deposits It is bound in newly formed phyllosilicate minerals. All the nickel in the silicate zone is leached downwards (absolute nickel concentration) from the overlying goethite zone. Typical nickel laterite ore deposits are very large tonnage, low-grade deposits located close to the surface. They are typically in the range of 20 million tonnes and upwards (this being a contained resource of 200,000 tonnes of nickel at 1%) with some examples approaching a billion tonnes of material. Thus, typically, nickel laterite ore deposits contain many billions of dollars of in-situ value of contained metal. Ore deposits of this type are restricted to