Question

How can the rock cycle be interrupted?

Answer 1

Slow down in plate tectonic movements or global cooling events.

Explanation:

The rock cycle has been in operation on Earth for at around 3 billion years, but there is some evidence that it may have slowed down at some periods. One possible time was around 700 million years ago when the Earth seems to have frozen over almost entirely from poles to equator - the Snowball Earth hypothesis. During this time, the water cycle may have slowed and therefore weathering and erosion of the land may have slowed or stopped.

But plate tectonics was still active, so eventually CO2 would build up in the atmosphere again causing another hot-house global warming event and the rock/water/ cycles would kick in again.

During the very early Pre-Cambrian, around 3.5 to 4.0 billion years, the plate tectonic cycle had not got into gear as it is today and so the rock/weathering cycle would have been weak or slow.