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

Geologists have uncovered the remains of a massive tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean, a plate that had been hidden for ...

Chemical fingerprints from volcanic rock offer hints of what’s happening in the mantle below the area where three rift zones ...

Sea level on Earth has been rising and falling ever since there was water on the planet. Scientists were already able to use ...

A plume of molten rock rising from the depths of the Earth in heartbeat-like pulses is slowly tearing Africa apart—and will ...

Surprisingly, geologists don't have a good answer for when plate tectonics emerged, and estimates range from 700 million years ago to before 4 billion years ago, when Earth was still in its infancy.

Subduction zones, where one tectonic plate dives underneath another, drive the world’s most devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. How do these danger zones come to be? A study in Geology presents ...

Scientists have detected rhythmic pulses of molten rock rising beneath eastern Africa, threatening to pull the continent ...

New research hints that plate tectonics began earlier than 4 billion years ago — not long after Earth had formed. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission ...

In the Afar region of Ethiopia, the ground beneath our feet is stretching and tearing at a rate of 16 millimeters per year ...

Plate tectonics is unique in that the entire surface is divided into shells, or plates that have sharp boundaries. On Earth, these boundaries are known as subduction zones, ...

Due to the abundance of nitrogen and carbon dioxide present in Venus’ atmosphere, the team believes that Venus must have had plate tectonics about 4.5 billion to 3.5 billion years ago after the ...