GD
Geodynamics

archean

Modeling the Early Earth: Idealization and its Aims I

and July 10, 2024
Modeling the Early Earth: Idealization and its Aims I
An artist’s impression of the early Archean Earth, with minimal landmasses and a global ocean. Image credit: Alec Brenner.

The question of how we came to be is closely tied with how the Earth became what it now is. What was the early Earth like? How did it evolve to become a habitable world? Given a fragmentary rock record, how can we investigate the early Earth and its evolution? Dr. Junjie Dong from Caltech writes about modeling the early Earth in a two-part blog.  For the first part, he introduces the approach to e ...[Read More]

The geodynamic processes behind the generation of the earliest continents

May 8, 2019
The geodynamic processes behind the generation of the earliest continents

The earliest continents played a fundamental role on Earth’s habitability. However, their generation is still not understood, and it requires an integrated approach between petrology and geodynamic modelling. In a new study, Piccolo and co-workers developed a method to handle the effects of chemical evolution on the geodynamic processes. They show that the production of the earliest felsic c ...[Read More]

Pre-plate-tectonics on early Earth: How to make primordial continental crust

July 5, 2017
Pre-plate-tectonics on early Earth: How to make primordial continental crust
Artistic representation of the Earth in the Archean. Credit: Richard Bizley (www.bizleyart.com).

The sequence of events before continental crust formation has long been contested. Numerical simulations performed by Rozel and colleagues imply that the key to the puzzle could lie in the intrusive magmatism. Despite several decades of research on the topic, the trigger of proto-continental crust formation on early Earth remains an enigma. However, magmatic processes may hold the key to unravelli ...[Read More]