Discovery and History of the Rare Earth Elements

Tasman Metals Ltd is exploring the Scandinavian region for Rare Earth Elements, and holds 100% ownership of numerous projects prospective for both HREE and LREE. The region is rightly regarded as the "home of REE" as many REE's were first discovered in Sweden, including cerium, erbium, holmium, lanthanum, scandium, terbium, thulium, ytterbium, yttrium. The table below provides a brief history of the discovery and naming of REE's:

Johan Gadolin

Per Teodor Cleve

Carl Gustaf Mosander

Year	Element	Origin of name	Discovery	Nationality
1794	Yttrium	Ytterby mine, Sweden	Johan Gadolin	Finnish
1803	Cerium	After the asteroid Ceres	Baron Jons Jakob	Swedish
1839	Lanthanum	From Greek lathano = concealed	Carl Gustav Mosander	Swedish
1843	Erbium	Derived from Ytterby mine, Sweden	Carl Gustav Mosander	Swedish
1878	Terbium	Derived from Ytterby mine, Sweden	Carl Gustav Mosander	Swedish
1878	Ytterbium	Derived from Ytterby mine, Sweden	Jean Charles de Marignac	French
1879	Samarium	After the mineral samarskite	Paul E. Lecoq de Boisbaudran	Swedish
1879	Scandium	After Scandinavia	Lars Fredrik Nilson	Swedish
1879	Holmium	After the Latin for Stockholm	Per Teodor Cleve	Swedish
1879	Thulium	Ancient name for Scandinavia		Swedish
1880	Gadolinium	In honour of Johan Gadolin, a Finnish chemist	Jean de Marignac	Swiss
1885	Praseodymium	From Greek prasios = green, and didymos = twin	Carl Auer von Welsbach	Austrian
1885	Neodymium	From Greek neo = new	Baron Carl Auer von Welsbach	Austrian
1886	Dysprosium	From Greek dys = bad and prositos = approachable	Paul E. Lecoq de Boisbaudran	French
1896	Europium	After Europe	Eugene Demarcay	French
1907	Lutetium	After Lutetia, Latin name for the place where Paris was founded	Georges Urbain, Carl Auer von Welsbach	French and Austrian
1945	Promethium	After Prometheus, in Greek mythology, who brought fire to mankind	Charles DuBois Coryell	American