Our planet has an outer layer made up of several plates, which move relative to one another. While we may take this knowledge for granted, this theory of plate tectonics was only formulated in the ...

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 ...

We often affiliate plate tectonics with earthquakes, as we are all taught in school that the shifting of plates leads to big shakes. But plate tectonics serve a far more important job to the planet ...

MADISON — A new model of the Earth, 20 years in the making, describes a dynamic three-dimensional puzzle of planetary proportions. Created by University of Wisconsin-Madison geophysicist Chuck DeMets ...

A unique rock formation in China holds clues that tectonic plates subducted, or went underneath other plates, during the Archean eon (4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago), just as they do nowadays, a ...

Scientists have transformed the UNICORN computing code into an AI-like algorithm to more quickly simulate tectonic plate deformation due to a phenomenon called a ''fault slip,'' a sudden shift that ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Tiny crystals unearthed in South Africa contain evidence of a sudden transition on the planet's ...

A long-lost tectonic plate that once underpinned what is today the South China Sea has been rediscovered 20 million years after disappearing. The plate is known only from a few rock fragments from the ...

Scientists are among the millions of die-hard Game of Thrones fans digesting the show’s finale today. The striking landscape of Game of Thrones has led some researchers to build climate simulations ...