Long before forests, fish, or even single cells, Earth may have needed something as unglamorous as growing continents to make life possible. A study in Terra Nova argues that the planet's earliest ...

An international team of researchers' analysis of minerals from the Pilbara region of Western Australia has given new insight into how ancient continents on Earth formed as far back as 3.5 billion ...

The Earth is four and a half billion years old, so why they started appearing then is unknown, as is the mechanism to make ...

An AI simulation of an impact shows basalt-rich (purple) and basalt-poor (green) regions. (Curtin University) The planet ...

New isotopic evidence is rewriting the story of Earth's first continents. Imagine the planet nearly 3.8 billion years ago: a water world ringed by volcanic islands. How did solid continents arise in ...

New research reveals that Earth’s continents owe their stability to searing heat deep in the planet’s crust. At more than 900°C, radioactive elements shifted upward, cooling and strengthening the ...

At the height of the last Ice Age, enormous ice sheets covered much of North America and northern Europe. Sea levels dropped ...

A new study of the chemical components of rocks led by researchers at Penn State and Columbia University provides the clearest evidence yet for how Earth's continents became and remained so stable — ...

Tom has a Master's degree in Journalism. His editorial work covers anything from archaeology and the environment to technology and culture. Tom has a Master's degree in Journalism. His editorial work ...