The oldest terrestrial materials ever dated by scientists are extremely rare zircon minerals that were discovered in western ...

Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago, during the geological eon known as the Hadean. The name "Hadean" comes from the ...

The Hadean Eon, Earth's first geological period, remains shrouded in mystery due to scarce rock records. However, Québec's ...

Our planet has been asteroid-smashed, melted and eroded, enough that most of its original armor has been long buried. Except ...

Scientists agreed the rocky outcrops in a remote part of Quebec, Canada, were ancient. But were they really Earth’s oldest?

Canadian scientists found the oldest known rocks on Earth - dating back 4.16 billion years - shedding light on our planet’s ...

The Hadean Eon is the first period in the geological timescale, spanning from Earth’s formation 4.6 billion years ago and ending around 4.03 billion years ago.

These new observations challenge the longstanding Hadean paradigm - based on no observational evidence - of a desiccated, lifeless, continent-free wasteland in which surface petrogenesis was largely ...