Image: Tiny crystals called zircons are used to date oceanic crust. A newly developed method that detects tiny bits of zircon in rock reliably predicts the age of ocean crust more than 99 percent of ...

An ancient slab of Earth's crust buried deep beneath the Midwest is sucking huge swatches of present-day's North American crust down into the mantle, researchers say. The slab's pull has created giant ...

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 ...

Earth's continental configurations have changed dramatically over its billions of years' history, transforming not only their positions across the planet, but also their topography as expansion and ...

The mid-ocean ridge runs through the oceans like a suture. Where Earth's plates move apart, new oceanic crust is continuously ...

(a) Geological units and earthquake distribution of an oceanic subduction zone. The orange shadow beneath the volcanic arc represents partially molten areas and magma channels. (b) Thermal structure ...

Emerging evidence suggests that plate tectonics, or the recycling of Earth's crust, may have begun much earlier than previously thought — and may be a big reason that our planet harbors life. When you ...