Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. AI models used ancient zircons to reveal Earth’s earliest crust chemistry, solving a long-standing geologic mystery. (CREDIT: CC ...

The ancient history of Earth has always been hard to read. Most of the planet’s earliest crust has been lost, buried, or melted by geologic processes over billions of years. The rare remnants that ...

An artistic reconstruction of Earth during the Hadean eon (~4.5 billion years ago). Intense volcanic activity, heat from accretion, and frequent impacts kept the young Earth in a molten state. This ...

The Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt (NGB) – a complex geological sequence in northeastern Canada – harbors surviving fragments of Earth’s oldest crust, dating back to ~4.16 billion years old, according ...

) is a geologic eon of Earth history preceding the Archean. It began with the formation of the Earth about 4.6 billion years ago and ended, as defined by the International Commission on ...

The Hadean is the earliest eon in Earth’s geologic history, spanning from the planet’s formation about 4.56 billion years ago to roughly 4.0 billion years ago. It is characterized by accretion from ...

Right after Earth was born, it is believed to have been a hostile volcanic hellscape filled with magma. The Hadean period, the first phase of our planet's life, started 4.54 billion years ago and ...

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 ...