Origin of early continents and beginning of plate tectonics

• 来源期刊: 科学通报（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2020,（12）
• 页码范围: 970-973
• 页数: 4页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

When and how plate tectonics began are two frontiers being hotly debated [1].These two scientific questions directly concern the geodynamics of the early Earth and the processes and mechanism of Earth's evolution.Earth has a long history up to 4.543 billion years with the oldest zircon from a terrestrial rock at ca.4.4 Ga, yet the formation history of continental crust is debating [2].Being associated with the evolution of continental crust, the emergence of plate tectonics has been proposed to range from ＞4.0 Ga to ca.0.7 Ga [1-6].As for the question of "how", theories fall into two groups: uniformitarianism (rarely changed ever) or catastrophism (evolving all the time).