Found: Primordial Magma From the Hot Dawn of the Earth

Way up in the Great White North, beneath Canada's Baffin Island, lies material from the very beginning of the planet. The search for primordial stuff—rocks that have survived 4.5 billion years since the formation of the Earth without being changed by forces that shook and scrambled our planet—is one of geology's long-running quests. In Nature this week, Matthew Jackson says he may have done it. Jackson's team found lava rocks in Canada with a signature that matches that of the newly formed Earth, suggesting there is material below the snowy surface that has endured unchanged throughout the planet's history.