Crust almost as old as the planet and thousands of kilometres long found floating under Australia

A four million-year-old chunk of the Earth's crust, the size of Ireland, has been found floating under Western Australia.

According to the researchwhich was published online on June 17 in the journal Terra Nova, the old crust spans an area of at least 38,610 square miles (100,000 square kilometres) and is buried"Tens of kilometres" underground.

The Earth is 4.54 billion years old and the piece of Earth's crust is 4 billion old which makes it among the oldest on Earth. The rocks of the Canadian Shield, which are located on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay and date back 4.3 billion years, are the oldest, according to Space.

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Due to plate tectonics, which continuously stirs up and pushes Earth's crust back into the mantle, the majority of the planet's rocky surface was formed within the last couple of billion years.

Researchers have discovered the crust near Australia's Jack Hills, a site that is also home to small minerals called zircons that date back 4.4 billion years. This makes them the oldest materials on Earth to have been found.

Maximilian Droellner, a doctoral student at Curtin University in Australia and study co-author, said in a statement that the oldest crust like the recently discovered chunk in Western Australia tends to date back around 4 billion years. He said that this suggests that something noteworthy occurred in that period of Earth's history.

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"When comparing our findings to existing data, it appears many regions around the world experienced a similar timing of early crust formation and preservation," he said.

"This suggests a significant change in the evolution of the Earth some four billion years ago, as meteorite bombardment waned, crust stabilized and life on Earth began to establish."

Based on geochemical hints in the sediments found in the region, Droellmer and his colleagues believe that there is an older crust buried there. They also ran to test out their theory.

Researchers can learn more about the continents' early creation by comprehending how the crust formed 4 billion years ago, the researchers wrote. The planet's surface was constantly shifting during this time, and very few remnants of the early Earth have survived. This period laid the foundation for the planet as it is now.

(With inputs from agencies)

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