Rocks and Minerals

Rocks, like airplane flight recorders, store in their interior very useful information about what has happened in the past. Whether forming caves in the middle of mountains, mixed among folds, or lying at the bottom of lakes and oceans, stones are everywhere, and they hold clues to the past. By studying rocks, we can reconstruct the history of the Earth. Even the most insignificant rocks can tell stories about other times, because rocks have been around since the beginning of the universe. They were part of the cloud of dust and gases that revolved around the Sun over four billion years ago. Rocks have been silent witnesses to the cataclysms our planet has experienced. They know the cold of the glacial era, the intense heat of the Earth's interior, and the fury of the oceans. They store much information about how external agents, such as wind, rain, ice, and temperature changes, have been altering the planet's surface for millions of years.