Geology of Australia

High school (ages 12+)
Geography

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/geology-of-australia

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. How big is Geology of Australia?Approximately 7.7 million square kilometers
2. What is the location?Southern Hemisphere, situated on the Indo-Australian Plate
3. What is the age of oldest known terrestrial material?Jack Hills zircons, dating to approximately 4.4 billion years
4. What are cratons and why are they important in Australia?Cratons are very old, stable pieces of Earth’s crust that form the foundation of Australia. They hold rocks that are over 3.8 billion years old, showing how Earth started.
5. How old are the rocks found in the Yilgarn and Pilbara Cratons?The rocks in those cratons are more than 3.8 billion years old, dating back to the Hadean and Archean eons.

Craton: A stable, ancient block of continental lithosphere, forming the nucleus of a continent.
Hadean Eon: The earliest geological eon, from Earth's formation to about 4 billion years ago.
Archean Eon: The geological eon from about 4 to 2.5 billion years ago, characterized by early crust formation and the emergence of life.
Phanerozoic Eon: The current geological eon, from about 541 million years ago to the present, characterized by abundant animal and plant life.