In an international collaboration, Earth scientists at the University of Cologne and Freie Universität Berlin have discovered that some magmas on Earth, which made their way through the deep terrestrial mantle and erupted at Earth's surface, originate from mantle portions that contain remnants of Earth's earliest crust. This ancient material must have been buried in a "graveyard" of old and cold crust more than 4 billion years ago and survived since then, maybe since the giant impact event that formed the moon.