{"id":316271,"date":"2021-08-06T00:13:19","date_gmt":"2021-08-05T21:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/stonehenge-rocks-are-nearly-2-billion-years-old-study\/"},"modified":"2021-08-06T00:13:19","modified_gmt":"2021-08-05T21:13:19","slug":"stonehenge-rocks-are-nearly-2-billion-years-old-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/stonehenge-rocks-are-nearly-2-billion-years-old-study\/","title":{"rendered":"#Stonehenge rocks are nearly 2 billion years old: study"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Stonehenge rocks are nearly 2 billion years old: study<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

It\u2019s a rock of the ages.<\/p>\n

A long-lost piece of Stonehenge has revealed the prehistoric monument is nearly 2 billion years old \u2014\u00a0giving new insight into its super-durable makeup, according to a new study.<\/p>\n

Robert Phillips, a worker restoring the monument in England in 1958, took home a rock fragment that was recently unearthed and studied by researchers at the University of Brighton in England.<\/p>\n

The fact that the monument\u2019s minerals formed 1.6 million years ago \u2014\u00a0back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth \u2014\u00a0explains why it has lasted so long, University of Brighton geomorphologist David Nash, who led the study, told Reuters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis explains the stone\u2019s resistance to weathering and why it made an ideal material for monument-building,\u201d Nash said.<\/p>\n

\"Sheep
Stonehenge rocks are nearly 2 billion years old, according to a new study.<\/figcaption>
REUTERS\/\/Toby Melville<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The study showed that the silcrete compound of the rock is largely composed of grains cemented tightly together by interlocking crystals of quartz, which is extremely durable and does not easily crumble or erode even when exposed to the elements.<\/p>\n

The megaliths are made of stone called silcrete, which formed gradually within a few yards of the surface as a result of groundwater washing through the underground sediment.<\/p>\n

Researchers studied a core sample of the rock, called Stone 58, which was kept in the US for decades before being returned to Britain for research in 2018. The sarsens were erected at the site on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire by late Neolithic people around 2500 BC.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, researchers described the comprehensive study, which provided a glimpse inside one of Stonehenge\u2019s 52 sandstone megaliths, known as sarsens, gaining insight into its geology and chemistry, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n

\"The
Researchers studied a core sample of the rock called Stone 58.<\/figcaption>
REUTERS\/Dylan Martinez<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stone 58, stands about 23 feet tall, with another 7 feet underground, and an estimated above-ground weight of 24 tons.<\/p>\n

The core sample \u2014 about an inch in diameter and roughly a yard long \u2013 is brighter than the pale-gray exterior of the megaliths.<\/p>\n

It was given as a souvenir to Robert Phillips, who worked for a company involved in the conservation work. He took it with him with permission when he emigrated to the US in 1977. In 2018, he decided to return it to the UK for research. He died in 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting access to the core drilled from Stone 58 was very much the Holy Grail for our research,\u201d Nash told Reuters. \u201cAll the previous work on sarsens at Stonehenge involved samples either excavated from the site or knocked off from random stones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Stonehenge
Stonehenge\u2019s minerals formed 1.6M years ago \u2014\u00a0back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth \u2014\u00a0which is why it\u2019s endured so long, the study found.<\/figcaption>
REUTERS\/Toby Melville<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The scientists used CT-scans, X-rays, microscopic analyses and other techniques to study fragments of the core sample.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis small sample is now probably the most analyzed piece of stone other than moon rock,\u201d Nash said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sandy sediments within which the stone developed were deposited during the Paleogene period, 66 [million] to 23 million years ago, so the sarsens can be no older than this,\u201d Nash told Live Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But when the researchers compared ratios of neodymium isotopes \u2014 or atoms of the element with a different number of neutrons in the nucleus \u2014 in the samples, they found that some sediments were even more ancient, according to the outlet.<\/p>\n

Some grains were likely eroded from rocks dating to the Mesozoic era, when they may have been pounded on by dinosaurs, according to Nash, who said that some of the grains formed as long ago as 1 billion to 1.6 billion years ago during the Mesoproterozoic Era.<\/p>\n

The findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE<\/a>.\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Stonehenge rocks are nearly 2 billion years old: study” It\u2019s a rock of the ages. A long-lost piece of Stonehenge has revealed the prehistoric monument is nearly 2 billion years old \u2014\u00a0giving new insight into its super-durable makeup, according to a new study. Robert Phillips, a worker restoring the monument in England in 1958, took…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":316272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/08\/Stonehenge.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[113442,4854,16493,113525,9724],"class_list":["post-316271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-8-5-21","tag-dinosaurs","tag-england","tag-stonehenge","tag-study-says"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}