Dramatic mountains couldn't appear on Earth until its outer shell was strong enough to sustain them. New findings indicate this may have occurred during the Neoarchaean era, between 2.8 billion and 2.5 billion years ago.
Numerical simulations run by Patrice Rey at the University of Sydney in Australia and Nicolas Coltice at the University of Lyon in France suggest that only in the Neoarchaean did the Earth cool enough for its lithosphere to strengthen. That, in turn, allowed the crust to thicken and be uplifted to heights greater than 2,500 metres for the first time.
Newly rising mountains would have also meant more high elevations at which erosion could occur, which would have altered the geochemical links between planet and atmosphere.
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Geology: The end of flat Earth. Nature 454, 671 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/454671d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/454671d
