Some areas of continental crust have maintained long-term stability ... and colleagues have investigated the disintegration of one particular craton over a period of 200 million years.

Read also: Neanderthal-like tools discovered in China reshape history The lithosphere in this region is a craton – a large, stable part of the Earth's crust that remains unchanged for extended ...

The authors focused on crystals originating in a part of Australia called the Pilbara Craton. Cratons are the oldest, most stable pieces of continental crust, and they tend to form the cores of ...

"drops" of rock detaching from Earth's crust and plunging into the mantle. This discovery sheds light on continent dynamics over vast timescales. Cratons, these billion-year-old continental cores ...

The seemingly stable regions of the Earth's continental plates -- the so ... the reason why we see pieces of ancient lower crust exposed at the craton's surface today." With the help of numerical ...

Columnist Bill Sniffin writes, "I love showing off Wyoming’s beautiful places. But there are a bunch of lesser-known odd ...

A study by Chinese scientists in October of last year detailed how one of the oldest pieces of continental crust—the North China Craton (NCC)—had slowly been disintegrating in a process known ...

We looked at zircon grains from one of the oldest surviving pieces of continental crust in the world, the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia, which started forming more than 3 billion years ago.

Galactic voyage Artist’s impression of the Milky Way showing its spiral arms. (Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESO/R Hurt) The rate at which Earth’s continental crust builds up goes through cycles, peaking ...

Continental crust is less dense and much thicker than ... history of continents on Earth is preserved — the North American craton in Greenland and the Pilbara craton in Western Australia.

As these sections cool, they form “seeds” of continental crust, that can grow over time as more magma sticks to them. A diagram illustrating how different events line up with the movement of ...