Long before Earth could sustain life, our planet was an endless sea of magma, churning and burning in the black of space. Few geologic material from this era survives today, as most of it was remelted and recirculated in the Earth's mantle. Only in greenstone belts can one find chemical signals of these ancient, prehistoric rocks.

This specimen is a geologic sample from the Isua Greenstone Belt, which is dated to the Archaean Eon over 3,600,000,000 years ago and contains traces from the fiery magma oceans of the Hadean Eon. It is from the grains of this deposit that every stone, mountain, and continent first began.

All specimens are enclosed in an acrylic specimen jar with a removable top which arrives in a handsome, glass-topped riker box case measuring 4x3x1". It comes complete with an informational card that serves as statement of authenticity.

4.6 billion years ago, our planet looked quite different. It was not the green and blue world we know today with lush vegetation and life-giving water. In its earliest days, Earth was a ball of hot fire and magmatic oceans that burned endlessly. There was little atmosphere, no permanent land, and no signs of life—only flame and stone.

This was the oldest age of Earth, called the Hadean Eon, when the Solar System was still young, and our planet’s surface was constantly pelted with meteorite strikes. A combination of these impacts, the formation of the metallic core, and latent heat from Earth’s formation led to incredibly high temperatures through the mantle. During this time, bubbling seas of lava churned and spread across Earth. The world was covered in oceans of magma.

Slowly over time, these molten formations cooled and solidified into stone, eventually forming the continental crust that covers our planet. This crust was not static—erosion, tectonics, and time all created major changes in the cooled surface. Eventually, the once-igneous exterior was broken down into fine grains, pressed into new rocks, or subducted back into the mantle. The planet was changing, growing more complex and defined. Soon enough, it even cooled to the point where the seas no longer boiled and life could survive.

The evidence of this fiery past is still preserved in geologic formations called greenstone belts, which hold chemical signals of these prehistoric rocks. They have survived against the movement of the continents themselves, and provide us a rare first-hand look into our planet’s past.

Over 250 greenstone belts have been identified around the world, containing metamorphosed mafic rocks, pillow lava, and sediment sequences, signs of the Earth’s volcanic past. Some have been just a few kilometers long, with others ranging to thousands of kilometers in scope. Many also contain valuable ore deposits of silver, gold, and copper. Contained within these rocks are crystal formations that formed as the magma ocean cooled into the terrestrial surface, meaning they predate even plate tectonics.

A 2016 study of the Isua Belt found evidence of preserved stromatolites, layered sediment formations made by bacteria. These rocks were a major find, thought to be the oldest known stromatolites and thus the oldest fossil life ever discovered, but subsequent studies have tempered this excitement. Far more likely, the material is just a pseudofossil—the product of inorganic metamorphism in the greenstone belt. This is far from the first time the scientific community has had to walk back an exciting discovery of life, and with explorations of extraterrestrial geology on the horizon, it likely will not be the last.