The dominant occurrence of phosphate minerals in crystalline rocks is as accessory phases, most notably apatite, monazite, and xenotime. Because these minerals tend, to varying degrees, to partition U and Th into their structures they can often contain the majority of those elements in a rock. These three phases, again to varying degrees, tend not to incorporate significant amounts of Pb during crystallization and thus were early candidates for utilization as U-Th-Pb geochronometers.