Earth’s eighth continent, Zealandia, has been largely unrecognized and “missing” from maps for 375 years. This mostly underwater landmass, spanning about 4.9 million square kilometers, challenges ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Hadean was an inferno of fire and water that laid the foundations for life on Earth. Credit: Guillermo Carvajal / labrujulaverde.com Analyses of 4-billion-year-old minerals reveal active tectonics and ...

Africa's ground is shifting. Tectonic forces are tearing the continent apart along the East African Rift. Satellites and GPS show this separation is happening now, widening by millimetres annually.