page_title: Oldest dated rocks
hierarchical_section_title: Oldest dated rocks
caption_attribution_description: Deep time. Oldest rock. A fist-sized sample from the Acasta River, an obscure little drainage up near Great Bear Lake, Northwest Territories, Canada. This was collected from what is the oldest known rock formation on the planet, clocking in at 4.03 billion years in age, as dated by many labs. Postscript: Further age-dating has now pushed matters in the Acasta River locale back to 4.2 billion years. Since I collected this sample from the 4.03 site, I`ll leave it as is.
context_page_description: The oldest dated rocks formed on Earth, as an aggregate of minerals that have not been subsequently broken down by erosion or melted, are more than 4 billion years old, formed during the Hadean Eon of Earth's geological history. Meteorites that were formed in other solar systems can pre-date the Earth. Particles from the Murchison meteorite were dated in January 2020 to be 7 billion years old.
  Hadean rocks are exposed on the Earth's surface in very few places, such as in the geologic shields of Canada, Australia and Africa. The ages of these felsic rocks are generally between 2.5 and 3.8 billion years. The approximate ages have a margin of error of millions of years. In 1999, the oldest known rock on Earth was dated to 4.031 ±0.003 billion years, and is part of the Acasta Gneiss of the Slave craton in northwestern Canada. Researchers at McGill University found a rock with a very old model age for extraction from the mantle in the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt on the coast of Hudson Bay, in northern Quebec; the true age of these samples is still under debate, and they may actually be closer to 3.8 billion years old.
context_section_description: The oldest dated rocks formed on Earth, as an aggregate of minerals that have not been subsequently broken down by erosion or melted, are more than 4 billion years old, formed during the Hadean Eon of Earth's geological history. Meteorites that were formed in other solar systems can pre-date the Earth. Particles from the Murchison meteorite were dated in January 2020 to be 7 billion years old. 
  Hadean rocks are exposed on the Earth's surface in very few places, such as in the geologic shields of Canada, Australia and Africa. The ages of these felsic rocks are generally between 2.5 and 3.8 billion years. The approximate ages have a margin of error of millions of years. In 1999, the oldest known rock on Earth was dated to 4.031 ±0.003 billion years, and is part of the Acasta Gneiss of the Slave craton in northwestern Canada. Researchers at McGill University found a rock with a very old model age for extraction from the mantle (3.8 to 4.28 billion years ago) in the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt on the coast of Hudson Bay, in northern Quebec; the true age of these samples is still under debate, and they may actually be closer to 3.8 billion years old. Older than these rocks are crystals of the mineral zircon, which can survive the disaggregation of their parent rock and be found and dated in younger rock formations.
  In January 2019, NASA scientists reported the discovery of the oldest known Earth rock – on the Moon. Apollo 14 astronauts returned several rocks from the Moon and later, scientists determined that a fragment from a rock nicknamed Big Bertha, which had been chosen by astronaut Alan Shepard, contained "a bit of Earth from about 4 billion years ago." The rock fragment contained quartz, feldspar, and zircon, all common on the Earth, but highly uncommon on the Moon. In January 2020, astronomers reported that the oldest material on Earth found so far are Murchison meteorite particles that have been determined to be 7 billion years old, billions of years older than the 4.54 billion years age of the Earth itself.
caption: A sample of gneiss from the site of the Earth's oldest dated rocks (the Acasta River area of Canada). This sample has been dated at 4.03 billion years old.
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