Additional rings of zircon grow around the mineral's crystal core over time, like the rings in a tree trunk, and in doing so, ...

Tiny crystals of zircon can look like sand, or useless crud. But don't be fooled. With a radioactive tick-tock that marks the passing of billions of years, these small but mighty minerals offer us ...

A new analysis of that sample detected zircon crystals and dated them to 4.46 ... Meteoritics and Polar Studies at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, in a statement.

Zircon crystals are almost indestructible; some still around today are nearly 4.4 billion years old. They're like tiny time capsules that retain the chemical fingerprints of this extremely early time.

The zircon crystals we found in river sand and rocks from Finland have signatures that point towards them being much older than anything ever found in Scandinavia, while matching the age of ...

This material included tektites—natural glass formed from meteorite impacts—and zircon crystals that underwent intense shock from the explosion. These shocked minerals serve as key geological ...

In East Antarctica, a vast mountain range is hidden beneath thousands of meters of ice where it's been trapped for millions ...

"Thus the region provides a natural laboratory to examine what ... To better understand the impact date, researchers analyzed the crystals of zircon minerals in the Stac Fada Member.

according to the American Museum of Natural History. Zircon also has tiny amounts of the radioactive element uranium in its crystal structure, which decays over a long period of time and changes ...