There was a time when the entire Earth only had oceans. There was only water on the surface. After that, some parts of land first emerged from the ocean. Do you know which was the land that came out first? Recently, scientists have found the answer to this question, and the surprising thing is that the area that first came out of the ocean is in India. This week, scientists made two interesting discoveries. First, the earliest continents on Earth emerged from the ocean 700 million years earlier than previously thought. Second, the first land to emerge from the sea about 3.2 billion years ago was in India. In a study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists from India, Australia and the United States found what was the earliest crust to come into contact with the Earth’s atmosphere.
He explained how he made this discovery. To do this, he analysed the sandstones of the Singhbhum region of Jharkhand. It found geological evidence of ancient river channels, tidal flats and beaches dating back more than 3 billion years.
During the study, researchers also tried to understand what forced the Singhbhum landmass to move out of the sea. “The sandstones tell us ‘when’ and the granite tells us ‘how,'” Choudhary said in an interview. Interestingly, the results were surprising in that regard as well.
About 3.5 to 3.2 billion years ago, hot magma beneath the Earth’s crust thickened parts of the craton. This made it rich in lighter materials such as silica and quartz. This process caused the craton to become ‘physically thicker and chemically lighter’ than the denser rocks around it, causing it to rise up and out of the water. Over time, its crust thickened to about 50 kilometres, causing it to float on the water, like an iceberg on water.
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