Oldest Known Rocks Go Back 4.28 Billion Years

Canadian bedrock more than four billion years old may be the oldest known section of the Earth's early crust, say scientists at the Carnegie Institution. They used geochemical methods to obtain an age of 4.28 billion years for samples of the rock, making it 250 million years more ancient than any previously discovered rocks. The findings offer scientists clues to the earliest stages of our planet's evolution, they say. "There have been older dates from Western Australia for isolated resistant mineral grains called zircons," says Richard Carlson of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, "but these are the oldest whole rocks found so far." Read More...

Read the whole article on Scientific Blogging

More from Scientific Blogging

Related