Oldest rocks on earth are in Canada, and they are 4.16 billion years old

Canada is the land of hockey, maple syrup, and a tendency to end every sentence with the word “eh” – it’s also home to the oldest rocks on Earth.

A new study, published in Science, confirmed that the oldest rocks on Earth are located in the Canadian Province of Quebec as part of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt. The rocks, dated to 4.16 billion years ago, were formed during the Hadean Eon, the oldest geologic eon in earth’s history.

“This confirmation positions the Nuvvuagittuq Belt as the only place on earth where we find rocks formed during the Hadean eon, that is, the first 500 million years of our planet’s history,” said Jonathan O’Neil, an associate professor in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department of the University of Ottawa, in a press release. (Foreign Media)