The plate tectonics theory established in the 20th century has been successful in interpreting many geological phenomena, processes, and events that have occurred in the Phanerozoic. However, the ...

Our planet has an outer layer made up of several plates, which move relative to one another. While we may take this knowledge for granted, this theory of plate tectonics was only formulated in the ...

The movie tells an 87-million-year-long story. It shows an early buoyant continent (made of a residual mantle in green and continental crust in red) slowly spreading toward the adjacent immobile plate ...

Researchers used small zircon crystals to unlock information about magmas and plate tectonic activity in early Earth. The research provides chemical evidence that plate tectonics was most likely ...

Earth’s crust looks solid from the surface, but it is broken into a shifting mosaic of slabs that slowly rearrange oceans and continents. Understanding how those tectonic plates first formed is one of ...

New finding contradicts previous assumptions about the role of mobile plate tectonics in the development of life on Earth. Moreover, the data suggests that 'when we're looking for exoplanets that ...

Researchers have spent decades hunting for clues about the origins of the process that moves the continents around. Its deep history is finally starting to come into focus. Earth’s outer shell ...

For hundreds of millions of years, Earth's climate has warmed and cooled with natural fluctuations in the level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. Over the past century, humans have pushed CO₂ ...

Tectonic map of the Earth. The first continental crust on Earth formed more than 3 billion years ago. Likely the first fragments formed by partial melting and re-crystallization of the primordial ...

Tectonic plates: can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Their movements cause some of the world’s deadliest disasters, but, as you’re about to see, the alternative is much, much worse.