Huge scientific breakthrough as ancient crystals shows major insight into Earth's history

Ancient crystals have provided major insight into the Earth’s history, helping scientists make a huge breakthrough.

A new analysis of ancient grains of crystal embedded in rock from the Australian outback suggests Earth had dry land and fresh water some some billion years ago — a time when scientists had thought the planet was completely covered in ocean

A study published in Nature Geoscience provides the first evidence of fresh water and dry land on Earth four billion years ago.

The oldest preserved crystals go back over four billion years ago. A range of ancient crystals comes from the Jack Hills in Western Australia’s midwest.

Chemical clues contained in the Zircon crystals revealed that the hot, molten rocks in which they originated came into contact with fresh water during the crystals’ formation.

Zircon crystals were analysed to try and determine when the hydrological system commenced.

Ten percent of all the crystals analysed were older than four billion years. 

Lead study author Hamed Gamaleldien told the Express “state of the art techniques in Curtin and China were used to determine the age and Oxygen isotopes for these zircon grains” with their discovery being "essential for life evolution".

Mr Gamaleldien said: “Zircon is the only mineral we can confidently date; most other dateable minerals will likely have their original signature destroyed by later processes that alter grains. 

“And other stable grains like quartz cannot be dated because they lack radioactive elements that can give us an age.

“There are undoubtedly super-old quartz grains in the Jack Hills samples, but we have no way to test that. We used state-of-the-art SIMS techniques in Curtin and China to determine the age and Oxygen isotopes for these zircon grains.  

“We measured the ratios of heavy oxygen to light oxygen, which are thought to be much lighter in freshwater than in seawater. 

“Measuring this ratio in over 1,400 zircon crystals, a valuable portion from 4.0 and 3.4 Ga had unusually light oxygen isotopes, indicating that they are formed from magma originated by interacting fresh water with rocks. 

“Our discovery revealed the first appearance of freshwater and dry land masses above the sea level, which are essential for life evolution.”