Study solves mystery of how continents formed

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com - @BednarChuck The secrets of how Earth’s continents first formed over 2.5 billion years ago lie in relatively recent geologic events that took place 10 million years ago in what is now Panama and Costa Rica. [STORY: Dense Earth crust was recycled into the mantle during Archean Eon] By studying recent volcanic activity in that region, the authors of a new Nature Geoscience paper set out to unravel the mysteries surrounding the extreme continent-building that occurred billions of years earlier, as well as how Earth’s life and climate have continued to be profoundly affected by those processes over the past 70 million years. The findings, Virginia Tech assistant geology professor Esteban Gazel and his colleagues write, provide new insight into the formation of the planet’s continental crust, which are masses of rock that are buoyant and rich with silica (a compound which combines silicon and oxygen). Earth sure is crusty “Without continental crust, the whole planet would be covered with water,” explained Gazel, a geoscientist at the Blacksburg, Virginia-based university.



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