From the article "Around 3 billion years ago, Earth's crust ballooned during a massive growth spurt, geoscientists have found. At that time, just 1.5 billion years after Earth formed, the mantle — the layer of silicate rock between the crust and the outer core that was more active in the past — heated up, causing magma from that layer to ooze into fragments of older crust above it. Those fragments acted as "seeds" for the growth of modern-day continents. The researchers found evidence for this growth spurt hiding in ancient zircon crystals in stream sediments in Greenland. These extremely durable crystals — made up of zirconium silicate — formed during the growth spurt around 3 billion years ago."
*massive growth spurt* is intriguing. We know the proto-earth must have undergone massive changes too after the giant impact with Theia to make our Moon, the Moon is dated only 4.4 billion years old in the new model, 'THE MOON MIGHT BE YOUNGER THAN WE THOUGHT', Sky & Telescope 140(5):11, 2020, Nov 2020 issue, "The team thus places the age of the Moon between 4.40 billion and 4.45 billion years, up to 110 million years younger than the commonly accepted age of 4.51 billion years."
Now reports are out showing Venus experienced recent catastrophism and no plate tectonics, 'Thick lithosphere casts doubt on plate tectonics in Venus's geologically recent past',
https://phys.org/news/2021-01-thick-lithosphere-plate-tectonics-venus.html, “At some point between 300 million and 1 billion years ago, a large cosmic object smashed into the planet Venus, leaving a crater more than 170 miles in diameter."
Slow gradual evolutionary processes at work (like Charles Darwin believed) or abrupt, rapid, catastrophism at work? Intriguing when you start to connect other reports and see where the trail of dots lead
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