Well, plate tectonics starting about one billion years ago is a very interesting model. I note this comment in the article - "While a primitive form of plate tectonics may have existed between 3.5 billion and 2 billion years ago, during the Archean or Proterozoic eras, it was probably very different from what the planet experiences today, Gerya said. And around 1.8 billion to 1 billion years ago, there was a quiet period in which the plates were much less active. But this is just speculation, he said, and there is currently a lot of controversy surrounding when plate tectonics started."
I note this report from 2012. Plate Tectonics Cannot Explain Dynamics of Earth and Crust Formation More Than Three Billion Years Ago,
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120601120606.htm, June 2012.
"Plate tectonics theory can be applied to about 3 billion years of the Earth's history. However, the Earth is older, up to 4.567 billion years old. We can now demonstrate that there has been a significant shift in the Earth's dynamics. Thus, the Earth, under the first third of its history, developed under conditions other than what can be explained using the plate tectonics model,"
Indeed much juggling now with many different dates obtained. Some zircon crystals on Earth said to be 4.38 billion years old, the dating for the giant impact with Theia creating the Moon, how long the Moon was a magma ocean while it cooled before evolving into the Moon we see today in the sky. Some recent reports indicate Earth's land masses appeared about 3.4 billion years ago, and now we have the very young ages obtained for the Chinese lunar rocks, said to be 2 billion years old, much younger than the Apollo lunar rocks dated 50 years ago. Put this together with the Great Unconformity at Grand Canyon showing one billion years or more of missing strata at Grand Canyon, there is a *science juggling act* taking place to explain Earth's past compared to what we see living today in the present that can be directly observed and verified.