Early Earth may have had active plate tectonics far sooner than thought
by Erica Marchand
Paris, France (SPX) Aug 08, 2025

Researchers investigating the Hadean Eon, which lasted from 4.6 to 4.0 billion years ago, have uncovered signs that plate tectonics began far earlier than widely assumed. The era started with Earth's formation and a colossal Mars-sized impact that created the Moon, melting the planet's interior. Crust solidification occurred about 4.5 billion years ago, but subsequent tectonic activity has been debated.

The dominant theory holds that during the Hadean, Earth existed in a "stagnant lid" state, with a rigid, immobile crust above mantle convection but without subduction or modern-style continental formation.

The ERC Synergy Grant Project "Monitoring Earth Evolution through Time" (MEET) - uniting geochemists from Grenoble, France, and Madison, USA, with geodynamic modelers from the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany - now challenges this view.

In a Nature Communications study, MEET scientists report that subduction and continental crust formation were already vigorous during the Hadean. The Grenoble group measured strontium isotopes and trace elements in melt inclusions within 3.3-billion-year-old olivine crystals, while GFZ researchers applied advanced geodynamic simulations to decode the signals.

Their integrated results indicate Earth experienced widespread subduction and early continental growth hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously believed.

Research Report:Growth of continental crust and lithosphere subduction in the Hadean revealed by geochemistry and geodynamics

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