In Earth’s early days, more than 4 billion years ago, the surface was a dangerous and unpredictable place. Violent volcanoes, crashing meteorites, and constant tectonic activity repeatedly resurfaced ...

While many rocks don’t burn, some of them do. It depends on what the rocks are made of – and that’s related to how they were formed. Rocks that burn when they get heated up are combusting. This means ...

On a remote rocky outcropping in northern Canada, scientists have found further confirmation that the area hosts some of the world’s oldest rocks (Science 2025, DOI: 10.1126/science.ads8461). The ...

The building blocks of the first continents are comprised of three types of granitoid rocks—tonalite, trondhjemite and granodiorite (TTG). Geoscientists have uncovered a missing link in the enigmatic ...

AI models used ancient zircons to reveal Earth’s earliest crust chemistry, solving a long-standing geologic mystery. (CREDIT: CC BY-SA 4.0) In Earth’s early days, more than 4 billion years ago, the ...