Oldest Diamonds on Earth Discovered

And now for some science stuff, this time from Livescience.

The oldest diamonds ever discovered have been uncovered within zircon crystals in Australia's Western Desert's Jack Hills region. The analysis of these jewels, dating from over 4 billion ears ago, have led to a new theory that postulates that the Earth was subjected to far faster cooling after its formation than previously believed, with the planet's oceans and continental crust forming quite early in its history, in fact quite shortly (in geologic terms) after the impact event that is thought to have created the Earth's moon.

"The scientists, led by Martina Menneken of the Institute of Mineralogy, ran chemical analyses of the zircons, finding the ancient crystals (and thus the enclosed diamonds) were more than 4 billion years old. That's nearly a billion years older than the previous oldest-known terrestrial diamonds and suggests the diamonds were present in material that crystallized within 300 million years of the formation of Earth, the scientists say."