The Itsaq Gneiss Complex
The largest surviving patch of Earth's earliest crust, in south-west Greenland.
- When
- Known to
- ± 50 million years
- Era
- Eoarchean, Archean
A terrain of tonalitic gneiss roughly 3.85 to 3.6 billion years old, and the most extensive tract of Eoarchean crust anywhere. It shows continental crust was being generated in volume this early, not merely in isolated grains. Almost everything known about Earth's surface before 3.5 billion years ago comes from this complex and a handful of comparable fragments in Canada and Labrador.