Earth’s first continents emerged from the ocean 700m years earlier than thought

Earth’s first continents emerged from the ocean between 3.3 billion and 3.2 billion years ago, before the existence of plate tectonics. An analysis of rock sediments from India places the rise of the first stable continents some 700 million years earlier than previously thought. The rocks might have been formed by lava piling up from continuous volcanic activity on Earth’s crust, and floating above the water like an iceberg.