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 dance of the continents has been reshaping Earth for billions of years, creating the landscapes we walk on today. Scientists are unlocking secrets about how plate tectonics forged our modern world ...

The formation of Earth’s continents billions of years ago set the stage for life to thrive. But scientists disagree over how those land masses formed and if it was through geological processes we ...

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 ...

Fresh evidence suggests early Earth wasn’t locked under a rigid stagnant lid but was already experiencing intense subduction.

Earth’s earliest crust, formed over 4.5 billion years ago, has long been thought to have lacked the complex chemical features associated with continental crust. However, a recent study published in ...

The earth is a poor archivist. The rigid tectonic plates of its outer layers are continuously in motion, sliding over one another to swallow almost all records of the past, melting them into the ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...