Pre-PANGEA Theories. What was going on 1 billion years ago?

Question

I was watching something last night but I fell asleep and forgot to record it. It might have been called "How Earth was Made." On TLC or NGC.
They had a graphic of early earth playing through and the time line started at 4.6 bya. I saw 1.5 when oxygen and then water was abundant.
Are there any ideas of what land was like then? Fossils? Where is this land positioned now on the globe if it even exists any longer?

Answer 1

That's about the time the Belt Supergroup was deposited in what is now the area around western Montana, Idaho, and Alberta. The sedimentary rocks of the Belt Supergroup includes plenty of extremely primitive plants and bacteria, along with well preserved mud cracks and ripple marks. There is no evidence of life on land.

A big mystery is that even though the basin they were deposited in was dry at times, there is no evidence of windblown sand. Hypotheses about this include very gentle weather with almost no movement of wind. Whatever the reason, atmospheric conditions must have been quite different.

At that time, a supercontinent was breaking up. It is called Nuna, Columbia, and Hudsonia depending on what author and how old the work you are reading is. Vaalbara is a proposed supercontinent older than that, as is Kenorland. Rodinia is a supercontinent that was about half as old as the time frame you are talking about, around 750 million years ago. Pangea was the most recent supercontinent.

Answer 2

This is simply a theory with a lot of speculation from an evolutionary viewpoint. There is no proven mechanism for continental drift.

Actually, there is another more likely theory. The earth was struck by an asteroid or comet which slit the earth open, forming the mid-Atlantic Ridge. Highly mineralized water under tremendous pressure burst out as fountains of the deep. The crust was forced upward and the surface hydroplaned or slid apart. Volcanoes and worldwide earthquakes shook the earth. This subterranian water caused the oceans to cover all the dry land. During this event the lunar tides formed strata sorting and depositing fossils by hydrostatic equilibrium and ecological environments. The deep water animals were buried first, then higher and higher land areas. After that, the continents being lighter than the salt water rose out of the water.