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The oxygen isotopes of shales from every continent show land standing above the sea at near-modern height and extent by about 2.5 billion years ago; before that the continents lay mostly under water. The timing is debated, and some place it earlier, about 3.2 billion years ago.
The mechanism
THE DRY LAND APPEARS — continents above the sea
How it was checked
- EvidenceT7 PRIMARY DOCUMENT / MEASUREMENT; Status: ADDED 2026-09-19
- Letter eraTHE DECLARATION AND THE DEEP RECORD the awakening to Babel: dated by ruling and by the record, placed by story where the text gives no date
- SourcesMEASUREMENT — triple-oxygen isotopes of shales across 3.7 billion years (Bindeman et al., Nature 557:545–548, 2018)
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