Scientists recently unveiled the nation's newest "oldest known" rock — discovered in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin all feature ancient rocks known as gneisses — ...

The people at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History were nice enough to give a couple members of the Chemistry in Pictures team a behind-the-scenes look at their mineral ...

What we know today as Sabino Canyon was the site of a whole lot of scrunching 25 million years ago. In a geologic nutshell: Two ancient types of rock - 1.4-billion-year-old Oracle granite and ...

Have you ever stood on a piece of Earth, whether at an impressive national park like the Grand Canyon (the most-visited natural wonder in the world) or even in your own backyard, and wondered just how ...

Dwayne Johnson is a big Hollywood star who has been going by the name “The Rock” ever since his wrestling days. He’s been known to the world as The Rock for a long time, so it’s no surprise that a ...

Some of the Earth’s oldest rocks may have formed from the high temperatures of meteorite impacts, a new study reports. Granite-like, or felsic, rocks in northwest Canada dating back to the Earth’s ...

This media is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's ...

We know Earth is old. Scientists estimate that our planet formed around 4.5 billion years ago. But how old is it exactly? And what was it like when our planet was still forming? These questions have ...

Figure 1: Comparison of the whole-rock chemical compositions of the Idiwhaa tonalitic gneiss with Icelandic igneous rocks and Archaean TTGs. Figure 2: Zircon phase relations and correlated zircon U–Pb ...

In a recent study, geologists say Michigan is home to the oldest known rock in the nation. Watersmeet gneiss is found in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Minnesota's Morton gneiss previously held the title ...