The evolving continents / Эволюция континентов

Before launching into four thousand million years (4 Ga) of time travel we should have an introductory briefing. The aim of this book is to provide an up-to-date synthesis of Earth history as indicated by the geological record and constrained by isotopic, geophysical, sedimentological and geochemical data. However, recent single crystal dating with the ion microprobe has revealed the existence of zircons over 4.0 Ga old, and this takes us into the pregeological period before the formation of the oldest known rocks, which have an isotopic age of 3.96 Ga. Therefore, we shall first consider briefly this missing gap of about 600 Ma before starting on the geological record. <...>