With a few pieces of information we can take what we know about the Earth today and deduce what the Earth was like in the past. This is the alternative to using Uniformitarianism to assume that things were the same in the past.
Present Day Earth
S-waves
S-waves, secondary or shear waves, travel through the Earth's crust and mantle, they can only propagate through solid material. Shear forces don't exist in liquids or gas.
March 17th
We illustrate a clear difference between the Hebrew erets (earth), and tebel (world). The foundations of the world (tebel) refers to the crust and mantle which was exposed as the ocean floor.