There's a billion-year gap in Earth's geological history. A new study seeks to explain the mystery.

Much of our understanding of Earth's past is derived from stratigraphic records exposed in rock outcrops or recovered from drilled cores. These records span immense time intervals, from thousands to ...

A layer of rock just 520 million years old sat directly on top of ancient rock dating back 1.4 to 1.8 billion years.

Most major geological events in Earth's recent history have clustered in 27.5-million-year intervals — a pattern that ...

A potential new mineral on Mars forms when iron sulfates are heated above 100°C. Data from Valles Marineris regions suggest ...

Houchin and his colleagues studied dozens of zircon crystals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia. These are the oldest ...

In 1869, John Wesley Powell was studying layers of rock in the Grand Canyon when he noticed an unconformity in the layers. Around a billion years were missing, and the problem turned out to be global.

The Great Unconformity is a major gap in Earth's geologic record. The missing layer between Precambrian and Cambrian rocks ...

In the 20th century, scientists began to suspect Earth was a lot older than we thought. It was our old friends/deadly foes, uranium and lead, that provided the first evidence.

Scientists discover that the Earth's magnetic poles can take up to 70,000 years to reverse, much longer than previously ...

A strange uphill river has been puzzling minds for generations. Now, a team of experts has found a few answers as to why the ...