dubya squared
Show me a kid that's not fascinated by rocks..... I think something happens during the teen years where more pragmatic likes take over. I used to sell mineral specimens - many of which went into small, sweaty, sticky hands in exchange for the 50 cent piece their parents had given them to spend at the show.
For interest's sake, the oldest rocks in the world have been found at the "Jack Hills" in the Kimberley District of far northern Western Australia. (So I am not the only fossil in WA!) The tiny zircon crystals were identified and dated by a guy I went to university with - Peter Kinny - aka Skinny Pete. Dated at 4.4 billion years, it is more technically correct to refer to "the oldest rock grains". This is because the rock they were found in is a metamorphosed sediment - and therefore the original rock that contained the zircons has been weathered away, releasing them. What I'm trying to say is that the zircon grains actually predate the rock they are now in - but it still stands that these are the oldest rock units on the planet.
The following URL provides an easy to understand collation of old rocks. Its logo is the actual zircon grain ID'd by Skinny Pete and the crew at Curtin University, Perth. There's also a few photos of the Jack Hills area - some pretty tough country.
I wonder if this was where Dr Walz got his specimen? (ie did he go Walzing Matilda through the Aussie outback?)
http://www.geology.wisc.edu/zircon/Earliest Piece/Earliest.htmlBTW - I got out of geology a few years ago - luckily. There's been wholesale unemployment since the Bre-X fiasco in 1997 and subsequent crash of commodity prices. Something like 1800 geologists now underemployed in Perth alone. Can't say I saw it coming - I just wanted to spend more time at home.
stales
