Earth was a broiling mass of lava and rock before it took the form that it has today, and scientists have for the first time discovered traces of that very early 'proto Earth' , hidden away in the deepest and oldest rocks on our planet.

The clues have survived some 4.5 billion years, so it's an astonishing find. The international team of researchers behind the discovery compares it to picking out a single grain in a bucket of sand.

As small and as ancient as these traces are, they can now be used to explore the environmental conditions that would have dominated Earth when it was still a brand-new planet. The discovery could also help reveal how planets like ours might have come into existence.

"This is maybe the first direct evidence that we've preserved the proto Earth materials,

See Full Page