Ancient plate tectonics in the Archean period differs from modern plate tectonics in the Phanerozoic period because of the higher mantle temperatures inside the early Earth, the thicker basaltic crust ...

A unique rock formation in China holds clues that tectonic plates subducted, or went underneath other plates, during the Archean eon (4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago), just as they do nowadays, a ...

Archean plate tectonics would operate subsequent to the regime of stagnant lid tectonics, involving not only bottom-up processes such as mantle plumes and heat pipes but also top-down processes such ...

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 ...

Earth’s crust may have gone on the move roughly 3.8 billion years ago. “Earth is actually quite distinct to other planets, in that it has plate tectonics,” says study coauthor Nadja Drabon, a ...

Geoscientists have uncovered a missing link in the enigmatic story of how the continents developed- - a revised origin story that doesn't require the start of plate tectonics or any external factor to ...

The building blocks of the first continents are comprised of three types of granitoid rocks—tonalite, trondhjemite and granodiorite (TTG). Credit: Jaana Halla Geoscientists have uncovered a missing ...