Ancient rocks from Canada suggest that Earth's first land was made billions of years ago in the same way as Iceland.

Geologists think that continental crust first formed as magma broke through the dense ocean crust and crystallized on top. Iceland is considered to be the best modern analogue of early continental crust formation, but until now no ancient rocks have been found with the same chemistry as Icelandic ones. Jesse Reimink and his colleagues at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, discovered that 4.02-billion-year-old rocks in northwestern Canada share the same geochemical signatures as rocks from Iceland, but have signatures that are distinct from 3.9-billion- to 2.5-billion-year-old rocks.

The Canadian rocks were probably formed as magma cooled and solidified in shallow waters, the scientists say.

Nature Geosci. http://doi.org/szb (2014)