Magnetic crystals provide the earliest evidence yet of the plate tectonics that likely made Earth habitable, pushing its start back by 140 million years.

The colossal movements of tectonic plates shape our world, influencing the composition of Earth’s atmosphere, the planet’s protective magnetic field and perhaps even the flourishing of life. Now ...

Scientists have uncovered the oldest direct evidence yet that Earth’s tectonic plates were on the move 3.5 billion years ago. By analyzing magnetic fingerprints in ancient rocks, they reconstructed ...

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 ...

About 150 million years ago, a massive tectonic mega-plate stretched across the Earth, spanning roughly a quarter of the size of the Pacific Ocean. Its jagged contours ran all the way through the ...

Earthquakes and volcanism occur as a result of plate tectonics. The movement of tectonic plates themselves is largely driven by the process known as subduction. The question of how new active ...

In 2021, geologists animated a video that shows how Earth's tectonic plates moved over the last billion years. The plates move together and apart at the speed of fingernail growth, and the video ...

A research team from University of Lisbon (Portugal) and Johannes Gutenberg University (Germany) has developed for the first time an advanced numerical model of one of the main processes behind the ...

TORONTO, ON - Geoscientists at the University of Toronto (U of T) and Istanbul Technical University have discovered a new process in plate tectonics which shows that tremendous damage occurs to areas ...

Deep under Ethiopia, scientists have found rhythmic surges of molten rock that are slowly pulling Africa apart. These pulses ...

A new study introduces a novel way for tectonic plates — massive sheets of rock that jostle for position in the Earth’s crust and upper mantle — to bend and sink. It’s a bit of planetary Pilates that ...

Scientists have uncovered one of the most exciting geological discoveries of the decade – the long-lost Pontus tectonic plate. This ancient “mega plate,” which once spanned an astonishing 15 million ...