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The geological history of the Earth follows the major geological events in Earth's past based on the geological time scale, a system of chronological measurement based on the study of the planet's rock layers ( stratigraphy ). Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, a disk-shaped mass of dust and gas left ...
Pelso Plate – Small tectonic unit in the Pannonian Basin in Europe. Timor Plate – Microplate in Southeast Asia carrying the island of Timor and surrounding islands. Tisza Plate – Tectonic microplate, in present-day Europe. Juan de Fuca Plate – Small tectonic plate in the eastern North Pacific – 250,000 km 2.
Plate tectonics (from Latin tectonicus, from Ancient Greek τεκτονικός (tektonikós) 'pertaining to building') [ 1] is the scientific theory that Earth 's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. [ 2][ 3][ 4] The model builds on the concept of continental ...
Historical geology. Historical geology or palaeogeology is a discipline that uses the principles and methods of geology to reconstruct the geological history of Earth. [ 1] Historical geology examines the vastness of geologic time, measured in billions of years, and investigates changes in the Earth, gradual and sudden, over this deep time.
Earth's crustal evolution. Surface map of oceanic crust showing the generation of younger (red) crust and eventual destruction of older (blue) crust. This demonstrates the crustal spatial evolution at the Earth's surface dictated by plate tectonics. Earth's crustal evolution involves the formation, destruction and renewal of the rocky outer ...
Earth's crust. Earth's crust is its thick outer shell of rock, referring to less than one percent of the planet's radius and volume. It is the top component of the lithosphere, a solidified division of Earth's layers that includes the crust and the upper part of the mantle. [ 1] The lithosphere is broken into tectonic plates whose motion allows ...
Continental drift is the hypothesis, originating in the early 20th century, that Earth's continents move or drift relative to each other over geologic time. [1] The hypothesis of continental drift has since been validated and incorporated into the science of plate tectonics, which studies the movement of the continents as they ride on plates of the Earth's lithosphere.
The geology of the North Sea describes the geological features such as channels, trenches, and ridges today and the geological history, plate tectonics, and geological events that created them. The basement of the North Sea was formed in an intraplate setting during the Precambrian. Rigid blocks were overlaid with various depositions, sands and ...