UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Earth’s crust continued a slow process of reworking for billions of years, rather than rapidly slowing its growth some 3 billion years ago, according to a Penn State-led ...

Geologists from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) have made a breakthrough in understanding how Earth's early continents formed during the Archean time, more than 2.5 billion years ago. Their findings ...

Stretching like a colossal spine along western South America, the Andes stand as the world's longest mountain range. It spans 8900 kilometers along South America's western periphery, is up to 700 ...

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 ...

Mountain building, also known as orogenesis, is a geological process that involves the formation and uplift of large, elevated landforms, known as mountains. The term "orogenesis" comes from Greek ...

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 ...

Continental clues: Modern continental rocks carry chemical signatures from the very start of our planet’s history, challenging current theories about plate tectonics. Researchers have made a new ...

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge in Iceland. This area is the boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, which move apart ~ 2.5 cm/year. Subduction and the formation of continents, a ...

The tectonic plates are among the most powerful forces on Earth, exerting tremendous influence over every single life that unfolds on this planet. They are both creators and destroyers, capable of ...

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 ...