This piece is part of a special project on deep time examining what the Western U.S. was like thousands, millions and even billions of years ago, and how that history is still visible and ...

For decades, scientists have theorized that the movement of Earth's tectonic plates is driven largely by negative buoyancy created as they cool. New research, however, shows plate dynamics are driven ...

Earth's crust today has a surprisingly similar composition to the planet's first outer shell, or "protocrust," new research finds. This early rocky shell featured chemical signatures previously ...

Journey across global tectonic hotspots to explore volcanic processes, landforms, and plate margins with vivid footage and expert explanations. Preview: Journey across global tectonic hotspots to ...

Palaeomagnetism is the study of past variations in the Earth’s magnetic field as reconstructed from the rock and archaeological records. In addition to providing information about the intensity, ...

Sometimes to truly study something up close, you have to take a step back. That's what Andrea Donnellan does. An expert in Earth sciences and seismology, she gets much of her data from a bird's-eye ...

Individual aseismic areas move as rigid plates on the surface of a sphere. Application of the Mercator projection to slip vectors shows that the paving stone theory of world tectonics is correct and ...