A photo of the 4.4 billion-year old zircon. John Valley / University of Wisconsin-Madison This tiny piece of early Earth, a piece of the mineral zircon, dates to 4.374 billion years ago. In the scheme ...

To put it mildly, this is one gem of a gem. Scientists using two different age-determining techniques have shown that a tiny zircon crystal found on a sheep ranch in western Australia dates back to ...

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. The mineral zircon is the oldest known piece of Earth existing on the surface today. The oldest bits date back as far as 4.37 ...

Geologists have found that an ancient meteorite hit Scotland 200 million years later than previously thought, which has massive implications for the geological history of the region and some of the ...