Rocks from the Hadean Eon, the first period in the geological timescale, have been dated in Québec. These are some of the ...

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

The oldest zircons ever discovered came from this rock. Ackerson once found a zircon that's 4.32 billion years old. Zircons that old "are extremely, extremely, extremely rare, ...

Geologists have long debated whether a stony formation in Canada contains the world’s oldest rocks – new measurements make a ...

The mineral zircon forms when the elements zirconium, silicon, and oxygen crystallize in magma or metamorphic rock. Over time, repeated heating and cooling adds outer layers to the crystal, like ...

Zircon crystals hidden within lunar dust samples collected during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 have revealed that the moon is 40 million years older than previously believed.

In a recent study, geologists say Michigan is home to the oldest known rock in the nation. Watersmeet gneiss is found in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Minnesota's Morton gneiss previously held the ...

An obscure rock formation on the eastern shore of Canada's Hudson Bay may contain the oldest known rocks on Earth, a new ...

Researchers initially believed the unnamed meteorite hit Earth 1.17 billion years ago, creating the Stac Fada Member rock layer in northwestern Scotland.

The study authors probed the zircons embedded in a lunar rock sample collected during Apollo 17 in 1972, and they constructed a 3D map of the atoms.

In a 1924 Rumford Falls Times article, P.L. Berry wrote of Mount Zircon “…on whose solid rock-bound summit rests… a steel tower with large wooden observation room… ...