Last summer, I wrote a little essay about a family trip to Morton, Minnesota. We went to look at some old rocks. (You heard that right. I made my family accompany me to Morton, Minnesota. To look at old rocks. In ninety degree heat.) You can read about it here.
The significance of Morton, from a geological standpoint, is the extreme antiquity of its rocks. At the time, the Morton gneiss was thought to be the oldest intact surface rock in the United States, having formed more than 3.5 billion years ago. Well, now some ridiculous thing called the Waterschmeet gneiss is coming for the crown.
The Waterschmeet gneiss lives up by my uncle in the U.P. It’s apparently three-point-six billion years old. Whatever.
I am, of course, extremely upset about this, and I eagerly await the day these results are shown to be spurious. Michigan sucks!