Friday, October 3, 2008

Oldest Rocks Discovered

Along the Northern Quebec coast of Hudson's Bay, Canadian and U.S. researchers claim to have found the oldest rocks in the world. The rocks are estimated to be 4.28 billion years old, according to a team of researchers from McGill University, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. Jonathan O'Neil, a Ph.D. candidate at McGill's department of Earth and planetary sciences and the lead author of a study to be published in Friday's issue of the journal Science, said the discovery would offer new insight into the early Earth.

"Our discovery not only opens the door to further unlock the secrets of the Earth's beginnings," said O'Neil in a statement. "Geologists now have a new playground to explore how and when life began, what the atmosphere may have looked like, and when the first continent formed."