The study also provides a new approach to solving one of the biggest enduring scientific mysteries: when did plate tectonics begin?

Recent discoveries offer deeper insight into the movement of tectonic plates. New research has found that variations in rock ...

This includes the movements of the Earth’s tectonic plates that result in the creation, destruction and rearrangement of the Earth’s crust and lithosphere. Water-flux melting by mantle fluids ...

New research suggests that Earth's first crust, formed over 4.5 billion years ago, already carried the chemical traits we ...

Researchers have discovered that the underside of the North American continent is dripping away in blobs of rock—and that the remnants of a tectonic plate sinking in Earth's mantle may be the ...

With a computer rendering, he helped scientists understand that the earth, with its shifting tectonic plates, is “an ...

"Why is Earth the only rocky planet to have plate tectonics?" said Qian Yuan, lead author of that paper and a postdoctoral fellow in geodynamics at the California Institute of Technology.

New research reveals a surprising link between the ancient tectonic history of oceanic plates and their fate as they subduct ...

Newly published research has revealed that compositional rock anomalies within oceanic plates caused by ancient tectonics ...

The Earth is made of different layers: the core, mantle and crust. Plate tectonic theory shows that the crust of the Earth is split into plates (pieces of the Earth’s crust). The movement of ...

New findings provide a greater understanding of plate subduction, or how tectonic plates slide beneath one another. This recycling of surface materials and volatile elements deep into the Earth's ...