Emerging evidence suggests that plate tectonics, or the recycling of Earth's crust, may have begun much earlier than ...

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 ...

Ancient rocks on the coast of Oman that were once driven deep down toward Earth's mantle may reveal new insights into subduction, an important tectonic process that fuels volcanoes and creates ...

With steep walls and deep valleys, the Grand Canyon in the western United States or the massive gorges that saw through the margins of the Tibetan Plateau are some of the most awesome and spectacular ...

In deep Earth, rocks take up and release water all the time, and the effects can be wide reaching. Dehydration can cause rocks to crack and trigger earthquakes, and over geologic timescales, this ...

New research on the remixing of Earth's stratified deep interior suggests that global plate tectonic processes, which played a pivotal role in the existence of life on Earth, started to operate at ...

In July 2024, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck Calama, Chile, damaging buildings and causing power outages. The country has ...

"Plate tectonics as we know it on Earth today is not a good model for understanding processes in the Earth's earliest history," Naeraa said. His team's findings were published May 31 in the journal ...

Tectonic plates lost to the deep mantle carry a record of ancient surface tectonic processes. A method for retrieving such records has been developed that could clarify the links between tectonics and ...

Far beneath the ocean's surface, where mountain belts rise and ancient oceanic crust lies hidden, a long-lost tectonic plate has been brought back into view. In one of Earth's most tectonically ...