ROCKS FOUND IN TELANGANA

ChinmayaIAS Academy - Current Affairs March 1, 2023 GS1, Indian Culture Leave a comment 266 Views

Rock samples dating back 4. 1 billion years and bearing traces of the weather-proof mineral zircon have been found in Telangana’s Chitrial, around 100km north of Hyderabad.
It can shed light on geological events from a dark age when the earth was in its infancy.
The latest research from a relatively young terrain can offer fresh clues about the earth’s early chemical evaluation and open a window into the first mysterious half-a-billion years of the planet.
Zircon was one of the first minerals to crystallise when the earth’s crust was formed out of molten magma during the Hadean age, according to geologists.
It is hard and chemically stable, making it resistant to weathering.
The discovery of the Hadean zircon in Telangana indicated that the earth’s early history could be found hidden in rocks in India.
Further study will help us understand the chemical and physical conditions, including the presence of water, in the first few hundred million years of
The only discovery older than the recent one in India was in the tonalitic rocks of Kendujhar district of Odisha in 2018.
That find was estimated to be more than 4. 2 billion years old. Zircon, a little more than 4 billion years old, had been previously found in Kerala’s Wayanad (in 2016) and from the river Baitarani in Odisha (in 2018).
The earth’s oldest zircon (about 4.4 billion years) was found in Western Australia’s Jack Hill.
Many other minerals and rocks from that era have perished, say geologists, but zircon has survived the test of time because of its extreme physical and chemical resilience.
That is why the mineral is called one of the most reliable timekeepers of the earth’s history.