Chicken or egg? Recipes for creating Earth's continental crust

Plate tectonics and strong, emergent, continental crust support Earth’s habitability; as such, continental emergence represents a key milestone in Earth’s evolution. Early Earth was a water world, with the crust almost entirely covered in water. Once the continents rose above sea-level, the weathering of these landmasses drove irreversible changes to the Earth system. Most estimates for continental emergence fall in the late Mesoarchean to Neoarchean, a time that overlaps with major changes in compositions of magmatism and continental growth rates. The late Archean is therefore recognised as an important period for understanding Earth history. Despite decades of research into the formation of Earth’s earliest continental crust and the processes that led to emergent stable cratons, there remain many open questions, with the geodynamic settings of crust formation being hotly debated. A recent study discussed herein, provides fresh debate on the fundamental question, what ingredients are needed to create Earth’s long-lasting, stable, continental crust?