To look deeper into Earth's past, the team went to the Jack Hills region of Western Australia, which is famous for its four-billion-year-old zircon crystals. The scientists used a high-resolution magnetometer to measure faint magnetic signals of iron-bearing minerals trapped inside 25 zircons. These signals indicate the strength and direction of Earth’s magnetic field when the crystals formed.
Crystals form is discrete lumps, so I'm pretty sure it's OK to call each one a zircon in the same way that "diamond" can designate both the kind of substance as well as an indvidual example of it.
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