Parts of ancient Earth may have formed continents and recycled crust through subduction far earlier than previously thought.

Microscopic zircon crystals discovered in Western Australia suggest that Earth may have had continental crust as early as 4.4 ...

The history of Earth's continents might be different from what we first thought. The most popular theory of how the continents formed billions of years ago may not be right, according to a paper in ...

The mechanisms underlying two important phenomena in the Archean—the emergence of continental crust and the presence of an exceptionally strong geomagnetic field—remain poorly understood. Notably, ...

Geologists from St. Petersburg State University, as part of an international scientific team, have analyzed rock data from ...

Scientists have eliminated one possible origin for Earth's continents. Despite the importance of Earth's continents, the huge pieces of the planet's crust that divide its oceans, very little is known ...

The formation of the Earth’s continents occurred during a fiery afterbirth known as the Archean Eon, which stretched from 4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago. It was in this bubbling cauldron of ...

Computational modeling shows that plate tectonics weren't necessary for early continents. The formation of Earth's continents billions of years ago set the stage for life to thrive. But scientists ...

Three main processes are known to generate the thick, stable, ancient rock that forms the roots of a continent, according to geologists. Diving of one tectonic plate beneath the other (which ...

In a bizarre geological twist of fate, researchers report that the very continents on which we humans call home were likely a byproduct of four-billion-year-old giant Earth impactors incredibly ...