Qualla: Jack Hills

Jack Hills: Introduction

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team, Public domain. The crystal is smaller than a grain of sand. It was pulled from a metamorphosed conglomerate on Erawondoo Hill in the Jack Hills of Western Australia, and when geologists dated it, they got a number that rearranged what we thought we knew about our planet's infancy: 4,404 million years, plus or minus eight. Earth itself is roughly 4,540 million years old. This zircon formed barely 150 million years after the planet coalesced from the solar nebula, during the Hadean eon -- a period named after the Greek underworld because scientists assumed nothing could survive it. The zircon survived.

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Image: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team | Public domain

Jack Hills: A Window Into Hell

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Llez (H. Zell)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The Hadean eon was supposed to be lifeless and molten. Early models of Earth's formation depicted the first several hundred million years as a period of relentless bombardment and global magma oceans -- a world so hostile that the name Hades seemed fitting. The Jack Hills zircons...

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Image: Llez (H. Zell). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jack Hills: Reading the Rocks

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original work: Aaron Cavosie, John Valley Extracted and re-arranged by Gretarsson, Public domain. The Jack Hills form an 80-kilometre-long belt of folded and metamorphosed rocks within the Narryer Gneiss Terrane of the Yilgarn Craton. The ancient zircons are found as detrital grains -- fragments weathered from even older source rocks and redeposited in sedimentary layers roug...

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Image: Original work: Aaron Cavosie, John Valley Extracted and re-arranged by Gretarsson | Public domain

Jack Hills: Heritage and Recognition

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Llez (H. Zell)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The scientific significance of the Jack Hills has earned the site formal protection. Part of the range was nominated for the Australian National Heritage List in 2003, received an interim listing in 2009, and gained a permanent listing in 2020. In October 2022, the International ...

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Image: Llez (H. Zell). | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jack Hills: Iron and Distance

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Llez (H. Zell)., CC BY-SA 3.0. The Jack Hills are not only a research site. The banded iron formation that runs through the range attracted mining interest, and Mitsubishi Development operated an iron ore mine here, exporting up to three million tonnes per year of high-grade detrital hematite through the port ...

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Image: Llez (H. Zell). | CC BY-SA 3.0