This makes them perfect time capsules from Earth’s early history. Bear in mind, this particular zircon crystal is absolutely tiny, barely visible to the naked eye. Despite its microscopic size ...

A 4.4 billion-year-old zircon crystal is providing new insight into how the early Earth cooled from a ball of magma and formed continents just 160 million years after the formation of our solar ...

In 2014, scientists announced that a tiny zircon crystal from Australia, 4.4 billion years old, was confirmed to be the oldest discovered fragment of Earth's crust. In 2020, a New York City jury ...