Abstract
About 30% of the Earth is covered by continents, but only about 10 small kernels of these continentsae—known as Archaean cratonsae—are continental fragments formed before 2.5 Gyr ago. The Kaapvaal craton of South Africa, which formed and stabilized between 3.7 and 2.7 Gyr ago, is one of the oldest reasonably sized examples of these continental fragments. It consists of a mosaic of subdomains that have been welded together by processes similar to those of modern-day plate tectonics. The earliest subdomains may have owed their origin to the onset of efficient recycling from the Earth's hydrosphere into the mantle.
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de Wit, M., de Ronde, C., Tredoux, M. et al. Formation of an Archaean continent. Nature 357, 553–562 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1038/357553a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/357553a0
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