Tectonic map of the Earth. The first continental crust on Earth formed more than 3 billion years ago. Likely the first fragments formed by partial melting and re-crystallization of the primordial ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. The modern understanding of the plate tectonic cycle predicts that remnants of submerged plates will be found near subduction ...

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 ...

Earth’s crust may have gone on the move roughly 3.8 billion years ago. “Earth is actually quite distinct to other planets, in that it has plate tectonics,” says study coauthor Nadja Drabon, a ...

Until recently, researchers believed only one planet in our solar system had plate tectonics: Earth. But in a recent study, Brown University researchers used atmospheric modeling to show that Venus, ...

Around the Balkan Peninsula, the African plate is sinking beneath the European plate. A piece of deeply submerged African crust resurfaced 40 million years ago far away from the sinking zone. How this ...

New finding contradicts previous assumptions about the role of mobile plate tectonics in the development of life on Earth. Moreover, the data suggests that 'when we're looking for exoplanets that ...

From continental drift to plate tectonics / Naomi Oreskes -- Stripes on the sea floor / Ron Mason -- Reversals of fortune / Frederick J. Vine -- The zebra pattern / Lawrence W. Morley -- On board the ...

New models that show how the continents were assembled are providing fresh insights into the history of the Earth and will help provide a better understanding of natural hazards like earthquakes and ...

The interiors of rocky planets and moons tend to be pretty hot compared with their surfaces. This heat, which can be caused by a number of sources — such as tidal stretching and compression, the ...