Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago, during the geological eon known as the Hadean. The name "Hadean" comes from the Greek god of the underworld, reflecting the extreme heat that likely ...

Our planet has been asteroid-smashed, melted and eroded, enough that most of its original armor has been long buried. Except ...

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

A new dating analysis of minerals in the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt suggests that parts of the formation could be as old as 4.16 billion years – nearly as old as the planet's 4.54-billion-year ...

Strange cone-shaped rocks led scientists to the hidden remains of one of Earth’s oldest asteroid impacts. It could help us find fossil life on Mars.

Our galaxy may reside in a billion-light-year-wide cosmic bubble that accelerates local expansion, potentially settling the ...

This photo provided by researcher Jonathan O'Neil shows an outcropping of about 4.16 billion year old rocks at the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in northeastern Canada, with a knife to indicate scale.

The new work suggests Earth's cratons first started emerging up to 3.3 billion years ago, roughly three-quarters of a billion years earlier that most prior models predicted.

The result: The rocks were about 4.16 billion years old. The different methods “gave exactly the same age,” said study author Jonathan O’Neil with the University of Ottawa.

The Hadean Eon is the first period in the geological timescale, spanning from Earth’s formation 4.6 billion years ago and ending around 4.03 billion years ago.