Heavy minerals (minerals with a density greater than 2.89 g/cm3) have highly variable stabilities with respect to transport/weathering but the combined effects of chemical weathering, transport and diagenesis (and overall maturity) tend to decrease their percentage in the whole rock.
The individual properties of heavy minerals being very different from one another and their relative abundance being a direct proxy of the nature of the source terranes and transport/recycling mechanism, heavy minerals have been used since the 19th century as a provenance tool.
The first published provenance analysis is often considered to be the study of the Dutch-Coast sand dunes by J.W.
Retgers [2] who combined petrography and chemical analysis of opaque minerals to assess provenance patterns in the basin.
[3] Heavy minerals are often extracted from large samples (2-4 kg) as they represent a very limited fraction of old and weathered sandstones (less than 1%[1]).