The dance of the continents has been reshaping Earth for billions of years, creating the landscapes we walk on today. Scientists are unlocking secrets about how plate tectonics forged our modern world ...

The audience was stunned. Atwater was the first person to use the newly revealed secrets of the seafloor to explain a ...

Map of Earth's principal tectonic plates. Earth's lithosphere. Major and minor plates. arrows indicate direction of movement at plate boundaries. Vector illustration. Billions of years ago, Earth's ...

Earth’s outer shell suffered a catastrophic break on 6 February last year, when a major fault came to life in southern Turkey. The Anatolian peninsula suddenly lurched to the southwest by as much as ...

Earth's surface is a turbulent place. Mountains rise, continents merge and split, and earthquakes shake the ground. All of these processes result from plate tectonics, the movement of enormous chunks ...

Using information from inside the rocks on Earth’s surface, my colleagues and I have reconstructed the plate tectonics of the planet over the last 1.8 billion years. It is the first time Earth’s ...

If the solar system’s hottest world, once had plate tectonics, maybe it was also capable of sustaining life long ago. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Scientists may have discovered the world's oldest arc-slicing fault in Northwestern Australia's remote deserts. The finding demonstrates that plate tectonic processes were operational at least 3 ...

Scientists have discovered a new layer of partly molten rock under the Earth's crust that might help settle a long-standing debate about how tectonic plates move. Researchers had previously identified ...

Earth's surface is broken up into large plates that rub against each other, causing earthquakes, volcanoes and large mountain ranges. But how unique is our planet's geology? When you purchase through ...

The research reveals how one of Earth’s defining geologic features likely formed — and set the stage for the emergence of life Abigail Eisenstadt Zircons are the oldest minerals in the world and come ...

The story offers a cohesive explanation for how Earth gained both its moon and its moving tectonic plates, and it could aid in the search for other Earthlike worlds. But others caution that it’s much ...