John J.W. Rogers

TL;DR: A supercontinent, here named Columbia, may have contained nearly all of the earth's continental blocks at some time between 1.9 Ga and 1.5 Ga.

TL;DR: The end-Paleozoic Pangea appears to have contained three continents that had grown in the Precambrian and remained intact until Mesozoic rifting: Ur, formed at 3 Ga and accreted to most of East Antarctica in the middle Proterozoic to form East Gondwana; Arctica, an approximately 2.5-2 Ga continent that contained Archean terranes of the Canadian and Siberian shields and Greenland; and Atlantica formed at 2 Ga of cratons of ~2 Ga age that now occur in West Africa and

TL;DR: The assembly of the supercontinent Columbia at about 1.85-1.90 ǫ-Ga coincided with several events that affected the entire earth, including rapid increase in the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere and oceans and probably the evolution of eukaryotes as discussed by the authors.

TL;DR: The formation of cratons and orogenic belts is critical to the modeling of supercontinental assemblies as mentioned in this paper, and it is known that continental blocks were assembled into one large landmass during at least three times in earth history.

TL;DR: Continents and Supercontinents as mentioned in this paper provides a survey of plate tectonics and describes the composition, production, and destruction of continental and oceanic crust, and shows that cratons or assemblies of cratsons became the first true continents, approximately one billion years after the earliest continental crust evolved.