THAT AUTUMN, A RESEARCH VESSEL called the Glomar Challenger sailed over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to drill holes and sample sediment. Fossils within the sediment samples they retrieved gave scientists a ...

The Pacific and Australian plates collide and interact in complex ways around New Zealand. Electrical resistivity data reveal that subduction-zone fluids exert an important influence on deformation in ...

Scientists warn that the plate beneath Gibraltar arc will begin to shift toward the Atlantic within 20 million years.

• Due to a lack of data, the studies available so far underestimated the seismic and tsunami risk of these large faults. A new study led by the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) in Barcelona and ...

It’s right there in the name: “plate tectonics.” Geology’s organizing theory hinges on plates—thin, interlocking pieces of Earth’s rocky skin. Plates’ movements explain earthquakes, volcanoes, ...

Vast amounts of sediment eroded from Earth’s continents were necessary to lubricate the wheel of plate tectonics, scientists propose. The idea offers a new angle on long-standing riddles about the ...

Before I retired, I would often take school groups on tours of the HSU Geology Department’s seismograph. We’d start out in front of the drum on display in Van Matre Hall and talk about how ...

Based on a series of models considering how the continents were assembled over time, a team of researchers at the University of Adelaide created an updated map of Earth's tectonic plates. The map will ...

A study led by Prof. Yong-Fei Zheng at University of Science and Technology of China focused on the development of tectonic processes along convergent plate margins through inspection of recent ...

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 ...

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 ...