The Earth formed over 4.6 billion years ago out of a mixture of dust and gas around the young sun. It grew larger thanks to countless collisions between dust particles, asteroids, and other growing ...

If Earth's first continents formed by subduction, that meant that continents started moving between 3.6 to 4 billion years ago—as little as 500 million years into the planet's existence.

An example of the 3.7 billion year old banded iron formation found in the north-eastern part of the ... [+] Isua Formation. These results provide the oldest estimate of the strength of Earth’s ...