04/01/2026
"Figure 1
(a) Global map showing the depth and elevation of Earth's modern oceanic and continental crust with respect to the mean sea level. Topography and bathymetry data are from ETOPO 2022 Global Relief Model (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/etopo-global-relief-model). Black borders depict the shoreline. At present, ∼29% of Earth's surface is covered by emergent land and the rest is covered by ocean basins, made up of oceanic crust and submerged continental shelves, that contain ∼1.34 billion km3 of water (Eakins & Sharman 2010). (b) Earth's current hypsometry along with schematic curves for the early Archean (>3.5 Ga), Mesoarchean (3.2 Ga), Neoarchean (2.5 Ga), and late Paleoproterozoic (2 Ga) time periods. The mean of maximum continental elevation and ocean depth increases and decreases, respectively, with time. The horizontal axis represents the proportional area. Schematic representations of an early Archean, water-world Earth and the present-day Earth are shown. Panel adapted with permission from Cawood & Hawkesworth (2019)."
Source:
Priyadarshi Chowdhury, Peter A. Cawood, Jacob A. Mulder. 2025. Subaerial Emergence of Continents on Archean Earth. Annual Review Earth and Planetary Sciences. 53:443-478. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-040722-093345
