Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago, during the geological eon known as the Hadean. The name "Hadean" comes from the ...

Scientists agreed the rocky outcrops in a remote part of Quebec, Canada, were ancient. But were they really Earth’s oldest?

The oldest terrestrial materials ever dated by scientists are extremely rare zircon minerals that were discovered in western ...

Today, phosphorus erodes out of continental rocks into the oceans, but during the Archean, Earth was mostly a water world, ...

Geologists from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) have made a breakthrough in understanding how Earth's early continents ...

Scientists have long wondered how Earth’s continents first formed. Now, a team of geologists from the University of Hong Kong ...

Ancient oceans with phosphorus-rich waters may have supported some of Earth’s earliest microbial life, according to a new ...

Our planet has been asteroid-smashed, melted and eroded, enough that most of its original armor has been long buried. Except ...

The Archean Earth was a water world with few islands sticking out. It would have been a curious sight, as the oceans were probably green in color from iron-rich deep waters.” ...

An artist’s illustration of Earth as it may have been during the Archean eon between 3.8 billion and 2.5 billion years ago, a time of violent asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions.

The only period of Earth’s geologic history known to include such high temperatures was between 2.5 and 4 billion years ago during the Archean Eon. Consequently, the researchers inferred that these ...

The Archean Eon (4–2.5 million years ago) is the second of Earth’s four major geologic eons, a time when the planet was mostly covered by oceans extending far deeper than those found today.