“Key to our investigation were zircon — or more precisely: zirconium silicate — crystals found in oceanic sediments of a borehole almost 400 kilometers (250 miles) northeast of the impact ...

Zircons--bits of zirconium and silicate that form in granite--are durable minerals. It’s very difficult to break them down, says geologist Nancy Riggs of Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff. If a ...

For decades, the search for zirconium has been bound by geological orthodoxy: zircon sands were believed to originate only from the weathering and wave-driven concentration of primary rocks along ...