Exactly when and how plate tectonics started, however, is a matter of debate. Now, in a study published March 19 in the ...

On present-day Earth, plate subduction continuously modifies the chemical composition of the convecting mantle, and various mantle sources linked to these processes have been widely studied. However, ...

This study is led by Prof. Yong-Fei Zheng at University of Science and Technology of China. It focuses on the development of tectonic processes along convergent plate margins through inspection of ...

An exceptionally well-preserved skull from a fish which lived 384–382 million years ago helps explain how plate tectonics played a key role in the evolution of ancient bony fish which eventually led ...

In 2016, the geochemists Jonas Tusch and Carsten Münker hammered a thousand pounds of rock from the Australian Outback and airfreighted it home to Cologne, Germany. Five years of sawing, crushing, ...

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 ...

The dance of the continents has been reshaping Earth for billions of years, creating the landscapes we walk on today. Scientists are unlocking secrets about how plate tectonics forged our modern world ...

For decades, scientists have accepted a particular theory regarding the evolution Earth’s plate tectonics, but a recent study published in Nature Geoscience could defy this as a team of researchers ...

A handful of ancient zircon crystals found in South Africa hold the oldest evidence of subduction, a key element of plate tectonics, according to a new study published in the open access journal AGU ...