Map of Earth's principal tectonic plates. Earth's lithosphere. Major and minor plates. arrows indicate direction of movement at plate boundaries. Vector illustration. Billions of years ago, Earth's ...

An enduring question in geology is when Earth’s tectonic plates began pushing and pulling in a process that helped the planet evolve and shaped its continents into the ones that exist today. Some ...

A hidden chunk of an ancient tectonic plate is stuck to the Pacific Ocean floor and sliding under North America, complicating earthquake risk at the Cascadia subduction zone.

A new study carried out on the floor of Pacific Ocean provides the most detailed view yet of how the earth’s mantle flows beneath the ocean’s tectonic plates. The findings, published in the journal ...

Memorizing seven continents feels settled, like learning the alphabet. A new study argues the ground rules are less tidy.

For millions of years, Earth’s moving plates have sculpted continents, carved oceans, and built massive mountain ranges. Yet some of these giant structures vanished deep into the mantle, hidden from ...

From space, the Iberian Peninsula – primarily occupied by Spain and Portugal – looks like an immovable solid block of land anchoring southwestern Europe. But beneath that apparent stability, the ...

Geologists have uncovered the remains of a massive tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean, a plate that had been hidden for over 160 million years. Known as Pontus, this tectonic giant once covered ...

Scientists have discovered a new layer of partly molten rock under the Earth's crust that might help settle a long-standing debate about how tectonic plates move. The molten layer is located about 100 ...

Research tracks deep carbon cycle over 540 million years, links icehouse and greenhouse phases to movement of tectonic plates ...

A hidden shard of ancient crust has been detected where California’s San Andreas system collides with the Cascadia subduction zone, reshaping how I understand the tectonic engine of the West Coast.

A geologic map of the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia. The rocks exposed here range from 2.5 to 3.5 billion years ago, offering a uniquely well-preserved window into Earth's deep past. The authors ...