Rock of Ages

Type d’organisme: 
Collectivité: 
Yellowknife
Région: 
Slave Nord
No de téléphone: 
Adresse: 
PO Box 11055
Yellowknife, NT X1A 3X7
Canada

Historique ou description

Dernière mise à jour : 29 mai 2023

Without getting into a lot of complex geology and mineralogy, the planet Earth is currently thought to be approximately 4.6 Billion years old. An early crust formed and a few microscopic fragments dating as far back as 4.1 billion years have been found but never an outcropping 4.03 billion years ago, part of the crust was metamorphosed into this Tonalite Gneiss, making it the oldest known rock in the world. Prior to this discovery the oldest known rock was at Isukasia, Greenland, dated at 3.8 billion year, and the oldest known rock in North America, at 3.4 billion years came from the Minnesota River valley in the U.S.A. The discovery of this rock is an important scientific-geological find and from now on most textbooks will refer to the 4.03 billion year old Acasta River Gneiss, Northwest Territories, Canada.
 

To collect pieces of this rare rock, a flight must be chartered from the city of Yellowknife to a small outcrop approximately 300km north of the city.  Flights leading to the small, remote island can be complicated by extreme weather conditions such as choppy waters, severe wind, blizzards, and low visibility and chartered flights are not always able to land.  Once arriving at the site, one will first notice a metal silo and once on shore, a closer inspection reveals the title Acasta City Hall, established 4.03 Ga (billion years ago), which is a building used for research expeditions and student field trips.  From this site, Rock of Ages’s owner Mark Brown and others are able to collect less than 800 pounds of rock each trip from the Rock of Ages claim.  Due to expensive nature of collecting, chartered flights to the Rock of Ages occur every other year or sometimes less.

The geological specimen that we get or rocks from contains the mineral zircon, which has been age dated at 3.962 billion years. Each and every piece of this rock came from the site where the world’s oldest known intact crustal rock was discovered, on an island in the Acasta River, Northwest Territories, Canada.

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