A sample of rough zircon crystal on a white marble background from Khibiny, Kola Peninsula, Russia. It is humbling to think that the history of our planet can be locked inside something so small. The ...

New research has challenged the long-held assumption that the Methana volcano in Greece, located about 30 miles from Athens, ...

New research suggests the Colorado River once pooled into a vast ancient lake before spilling over and carving the Grand Canyon. Using zircon crystal analysis, scientists traced sediments back to the ...

The oldest known Earth stuff that remains on the surface of our planet is a mineral that's been called the "Time Lord" because it's so incredibly good at keeping geologic time. The mineral is zircon, ...

Researchers used small zircon crystals to unlock information about magmas and plate tectonic activity in early Earth. The research provides chemical evidence that plate tectonics was most likely ...

Anyone have extra birthday candles on hand? Because NASA’s about 40 million short. A new and in-depth atomic analysis of an Apollo-era Moon rock — a hunk of hardened magma and zircon crystal collected ...

The Earth is really old - about 4 1/2 billion years old. And when scientists want to learn about its earliest history, they turn to a mineral that serves as an almost perfect geologic clock. As part ...