As one of the oldest industries, mining has been an ongoing cycle in the acquisition and consumption of resources essential to human life. Western Australia, a southern-hemisphere city bordering the Indian Ocean, began to take shape in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when a gold rush brought a surge in population, transforming it into a burgeoning urban center.
　　Today, this region—covering one-third of Australia’s total land area—extracts nearly 1 billion tons of iron ore each year. The ore is shipped via port to destinations around the globe, providing steelmakers—including those in China—with the “backbone” essential for everything from infrastructure construction to high-end manufacturing.
　　Fly north from Perth, the capital of Western Australia, for just over an hour, and you’ll see the Pilbara mining region, covered in reddish-brown rock and soil—a global hub of the world’s largest mining industry. A newly published study by geologists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reveals that the region’s high-quality iron ore deposits formed between 1.4 billion and 1.1 billion years ago.

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