(credit: Steven Depolo via Flickr)
The chemical and thermal history of the Earth enabled the reactions required to create the building blocks of life. Our nitrogen-rich atmosphere, for example, is critical for chemical reactions that have fostered the evolution of life.
The Earth is a dynamic planet, and elements critical to the formation of life (like nitrogen and carbon) are recycled through many natural processes. One of these processes is the movement of the Earth's continents, which recycles bits of the crust and some of the chemicals it contains. Though we have been aware that the Earth’s plates have been moving for quite some time, it has been much more difficult to establish the specifics of when and how plate motion initiated.
Now, new data from some very old diamonds suggests that plate tectonics was functioning more than three billion years ago.
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