Sentences with phrase «studies of zircons»

«This confirms our view of how the Earth cooled and became habitable,» says Valley, a geochemist whose studies of zircons, the oldest known terrestrial materials, have helped portray how the Earth's crust formed during the first geologic eon of the planet.

Not exact matches

The new study confirms that zircon crystals from Western Australia's Jack Hills region crystallized 4.4 billion years ago, building on earlier studies that used lead isotopes to date the Australian zircons and identify them as the oldest bits of the Earth's crust.

Just two years ago a group had studied the likely timing of impacts on the early Earth and they suggested that these impacts might explain the ages of the ancient zircons.»

For the study, they looked at data for roughly 120,000 zircon grains from thousands of samples across the globe.