As a youngster growing up in New York, Graham Baird always was interested in science and the natural world, and in college he was fascinated with how igneous and metamorphic rocks formed. As an ...

Tectonic map of the Earth. The first continental crust on Earth formed more than 3 billion years ago. Likely the first fragments formed by partial melting and re-crystallization of the primordial ...

Igneous rocks are formed when molten rock (magma) cools and solidifies, with or without crystallization, either below the surface as intrusive (plutonic) rocks or on the surface as extrusive (volcanic ...

Sedimentary rocks are made up of pieces of older rocks (igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary) and organic remains (shells, bone, etc.). When rocks break apart from erosion they are transported by ...

In my last column, I wrote about the locations where you can find igneous rocks that were formed from lava. The metarhyolite and metabasalt described in the column are known as extrusive rocks, those ...