Australia’s iconic red landscapes have been home to Aboriginal culture and recorded in songlines for tens of thousands of years. But further clues on just how ancient this landscape is come from far beyond Earth: cosmic rays that leave telltale fingerprints inside minerals at Earth’s surface.

In our new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, we show how this “cosmic clock” uncovers the evolution of rivers, coasts and habitats.

It also shows how giant mineral deposits formed. Products from these deposits end up in everyday ceramic objects – but carry a hidden landscape story.

Earth’s surface is constantly changing as the opposing forces of erosion and uplift compete to sculpt the landscape around us – one example of this is mountains rising, then being worn down by weathering.

To understand today’s environments and predict their response to future change, we need to know how landscapes behaved through deep time – millions to billions of years ago.

Until now, directly measuring how ancient landscapes changed has been a big challenge. A new technique finally gives us a window into the distant past of Earth’s surface.

By drilling straight down into the subsurface, we recovered samples that reveal ancient beaches fringing the

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