Due to the radiative thermal conductivity of the mineral olivine, only oceanic plates over 60 million years old and ...

Far beneath the ocean's surface, where mountain belts rise and ancient oceanic crust lies hidden, a long-lost tectonic plate ...

New research reveals that only the oldest and fastest-sinking oceanic plates can transport water deep into Earth’s mantle, ...

In a paper published in National Science Review, a research team from China present a quantitative estimation of water input budget of global oceanic lithosphere at different tectonic settings ...

The earthquake distribution on ultraslow mid-ocean ridges differs fundamentally from other spreading zones. Water circulating at a depth of up to 15 kilometres leads to the formation of rock that ...

The oceanic trenches are hemispheric-scale long but narrow topographic depressions of the sea floor. They also are the deepest parts of the ocean floor. Trenches define one of the most important ...

And a recent study suggests these rocks are hunks of oceanic lithosphere—parts of mantle and crust once beneath the sea—in this case, the Iapetus Ocean, which vanished more than 400 million years ago.

Tectonic plates are massive slabs of Earth's lithosphere that float atop the semi-fluid mantle, constantly shifting and ...

Figure 1: Changes in ocean-floor depth, sediment thickness and hydrothermal circulation with increasing age of the lithosphere.

The discovery by Indian and British scientists that the Earth's strong outer shell -- the 'lithosphere' -- within the central Indian Ocean began to deform and fracture 15.4--13.9 million years ago ...

A new look at the lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary may help understand the nature of this mysterious layer.