Memorizing seven continents feels settled, like learning the alphabet. A new study argues the ground rules are less tidy. The ...

When it comes to 3-D puzzles, Rubik's Cube pales in comparison with the latest creation from a team of geophysicists. They have just put the finishing touches on a 20-year effort to precisely describe ...

Let's get one thing out of the way: The supervolcano below Yellowstone is not going to erupt anytime soon; neither are any of the other similar systems that geologists have identified around the world ...

A new study introduces a novel way for tectonic plates — massive sheets of rock that jostle for position in the Earth’s crust and upper mantle — to bend and sink. It’s a bit of planetary Pilates that ...

A new study suggests that tiny, mineral grains — squeezed and mixed over millions of years — set in motion the chain of events that plunge massive tectonic plates deep into the Earth’s interior. The ...

In 2021, geologists animated a video that shows how Earth's tectonic plates moved over the last billion years. The plates move together and apart at the speed of fingernail growth, and the video ...

The emergence of plate tectonics is arguably Earth’s defining moment, the authors of a new Nature paper write. Out of all the planets we’ve looked at carefully, Earth is the only one that has a hard ...

A cold, crusty shell of a planet that regularly kills off its occupants with violent earthquakes and massive volcanic eruptions doesn't sound like ideal habitat. But Earth's grinding plates, the ...

The present shallow marme biogeographic pattern is geologically transitory and reflects in large part the present state of the geography of continents and of lithospheric plate margins. Provincial ...