Secular evolution of continents and the Earth system

PA Cawood, P Chowdhury, JA Mulder… - Reviews of …, 2022‏ - Wiley Online Library
Understanding of secular evolution of the Earth system is based largely on the rock and
mineral archive preserved in the continental lithosphere. Based on the frequency and range …

Onset of plate tectonics by the Eoarchean

BF Windley, T Kusky, A Polat - Precambrian Research, 2021‏ - Elsevier
One of the most contentious areas of Earth Science today is when, or whether or not modern-
style plate tectonics was in operation in the Archean Eon. In this review we present evidence …

Archean eclogite-facies oceanic crust indicates modern-style plate tectonics

W Ning, T Kusky, L Wang, B Huang - … of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022‏ - pnas.org
Establishing when modern-style plate tectonics with deep subduction began on Earth is one
of the biggest questions in geosciences today. A lack of Archean age (> 2.5 billion y ago …

Archaean multi-stage magmatic underplating drove formation of continental nuclei in the North China Craton

J Liu, RM Palin, RN Mitchell, Z Liu, J Zhang, Z Li… - Nature …, 2024‏ - nature.com
The geodynamic processes that formed Earth's earliest continents are intensely debated.
Particularly, the transformation from ancient crustal nuclei into mature Archaean cratons is …

Coexisting divergent and convergent plate boundary assemblages indicate plate tectonics in the Neoarchean

B Huang, TE Johnson, SA Wilde, A Polat, D Fu… - Nature …, 2022‏ - nature.com
The coexistence of divergent (spreading ridge) and convergent (subduction zone) plate
boundaries at which lithosphere is respectively generated and destroyed is the hallmark of …

Mélanges through time: Life cycle of the world's largest Archean mélange compared with Mesozoic and Paleozoic subduction-accretion-collision mélanges

T Kusky, J Wang, L Wang, B Huang, W Ning, D Fu… - Earth-Science …, 2020‏ - Elsevier
Mélanges represent a significant component of collisional and accretionary orogenic belts.
We present a comparison of subduction-accretion mélanges of different ages to test how …

Plate tectonics in the twenty-first century

YF Zheng - Science China Earth Sciences, 2023‏ - Springer
Plate tectonics was originally established as a kinematic theory of global tectonics, in which
the Earth's rigid outer layer, the lithosphere, consists of different size plates that move …

Growth of continental crust in intra-oceanic and continental-margin arc systems: Analogs for Archean systems

T Kusky, L Wang - Science China Earth Sciences, 2022‏ - Springer
Earth's continental crust has grown and been recycled throughout geologic history along
convergent plate margins. The main locus of continental crustal growth is in intra-oceanic …

Lithospheric thickness records tectonic evolution by controlling metamorphic conditions

ZJ Zhang, GX Chen, T Kusky, J Yang, QM Cheng - Science Advances, 2023‏ - science.org
The lithosphere, as the outermost solid layer of our planet, preserves a progressively more
fragmentary record of geological events and processes from Earth's history the further back …

Spatio-temporal analysis of big data sets of detrital zircon U-Pb geochronology and Hf isotope data: Tests of tectonic models for the Precambrian evolution of the North …

ZJ Zhang, T Kusky, M Gao, QM Cheng - Earth-Science Reviews, 2023‏ - Elsevier
The formation mechanism of the North China Craton (NCC) is controversial, with one model
(Model 1) suggesting that it was formed by progressive accretion of arcs by generally …