Somersetite was found at the Torr Works quarry in Somerset in the United Kingdom. It was named for the county in southwest England where it was discovered. Somersetite is green or white, hexagonal in shape, and has a structure unseen before in either minerals or inorganic compounds. Its structural architecture is unique among all other known layered structures. Somersetite is distantly related to the minerals hydrocerussite and plumbonacrite, known as the main constituents of white paints of the past. The Department of Mineralogy, Saint-Petersburg State University in Saint-Petersburg, Russia, is home to the precious holotype sample of this new carbon mineral.