Oldest piece formed on planet earth has been discovered on a sheep ranch in Jack Hills, Australia.
This is estimated to be formed during Earth’s original solid rock crust and is dated to be 4.374 billion years old.
Our solar system itself is estimated to have come into existence around 4.56 billion years ago, which means it took at most 160 million years for our planet to develop a crust.
Scientists two different age-determining techniques on the tiny zircon crystal, found in western Australia in 2001.
This tiny zircon was extracted in 2001 from a rock outcrop in Australia’s Jack Hills region.
It measures only about 200 by 400 microns, about twice the diameter of a human hair.
If you held it in the palm of your hand, if you have good eyesight you could see it without a magnifying glass.
The discovery that the zircon crystal, and thereby the formation of the crust, dates from 4.4 billion years ago suggests that the earth was perhaps capable of sustaining microbial life 4.3 billion years ago.
The oldest fossil records of life are stromatolites produced by an archaic form of bacteria from about 3.4 billion years ago.