Remains of Earth’s First Crust Discovered
In rocks in North-Eastern Canada, scientists have surprisingly discovered 4.3+-billion-year-old remains of Earth’s original crust. The crust made up the world’s exterior layer for the first few hundred million years following the planet’s origin, but it was later broken down or sank towards the interior of the planet. So, scientists believed that the old crust had disappeared, but the new discovery shows that it is not so. Geologists from the University of Ottawa studied 2.7-billion-yearold rock along Hudson Bay and found a high content of neodymium-142. The rare material was only produced for the first 500 million years of Earth’s existence, and so, scientists were able to conclude that the Canadian rock formed in a remelting of the original crust.