Zircon chronology begins in the field.

“You go out and look for relative age relationships, see

which rock unit was formed first,” says Henry. “For example, there may be a granite which
contains pieces of other types of rocks enclosed in the granite. Because of their position, we
know that the rocks enclosed in the granite have to be older.” Geologists map an area to identity
these relative age relationships. Then they collect samples, which weigh from two to more than
one hundred pounds, depending on the rock type. Zircons aren’t rare; in fact, they’re common in
granitic rock. But they are tiny grains that make up only a small fraction of any given sample,
typically less than a tenth of one percent, and they’re dispersed throughout the rock. This makes
separating out the zircons a painstaking process. The rock is ground up to break it into individual
mineral grains. Then, “because zircon is more dense than almost any other mineral, we put the
ground-up rock in a liquid with very high density so that only the densest minerals fall through to
the bottom,” explains Henry. In other words, says Mueller, “zircons sink. We also use the
magnetic qualities of the zircons to separate the most pristine ones from the rest.”

Then the detailed geochronology work begins. “I’ll take a fraction of those zircons, make thin
sections of them—slices of mineral thirty micrometers thick, roughly as thick as a hair, that are
mounted on glass—and get an idea of what they look like in terms of zoning pattern, whether
they underwent multiple episodes of growth, how simple or complex they are,” says Henry. He
passes this information along to Mueller, along with the sample’s geological context. “I also look
at a thin section of the rock to learn something about the framework in which the zircon occurs.
Is it in a granite? Or is it in a metamorphic rock that has had a more complex history? Or is it a
metamorphosed sedimentary rock? By knowing its history, we can interpret the age of the rock
much better.”

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