Earth's Original Crust Still Hanging Around

New research finds bits of Earth's original crust in Canada. (Credit NASA) Researchers who want to study the nature of Earth's original crust find themselves between a rock and a hard place: Our planet's top layer is constantly wearing down in one spot and building up in another, continents colliding or slip-sliding past each other in the great mosh pit of plate tectonics. You might have figured none of the early crust was even still around. New research shows you would have figured wrong. Today in Science, researchers announced they'd found bits of Earth's original crust still in place, in northern Quebec, Canada. The team believes the rocks are more than 4.2 billion years old — that's just a couple hundred million years shy of Earth's birth some 4.5 billion years ago. And really, what's a couple hundred million years between friends?