Group 12 element zinc and cadmium which makes geological separation unlikely. As a consequence, cadmium is produced mainly as a byproduct from mining, smelting, and refining sulfidic ores of zinc, and, to a lesser degree, lead and copper. One place where metallic cadmium can be found is the Vilyuy River basin in Siberia. Although mercury is an extremely rare element in the Earth's crust, because it does not blend geochemically with those elements that constitute the majority of the crustal mass, mercury ores can be highly concentrated considering the element's abundance in ordinary rock. The richest mercury ores contain up to 2.5% mercury
Bioabsorbable metallic glass numerous ternary alloys along the 350 °C isotherm of the Mg-Zn-Ca system. Ternary Ca-Mg-Zn bulk metallic glasses were also discovered in 2005. Similar to the Mg-Zn-Ca, these two amorphous alloys are both bioresorbable metallic glasses and are based on the same "Mg-Zn-Ca ternary system". The elements are displayed in order of decreasing atomic concentration. Hence, the distinction between these two metallic glasses lies in their most dominant element, namely Ca and Mg. These Ca-based bulk glassy alloys had compositions of CaMgZn, CaMgZn, and CaMgZn, where X = 0, 5 and 10; Y = 0, 5, 7.5, 10, and 15; and