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 ...

The outermost layer of the Earth is the crust. The continents sit on continental crust, which covers about 41 percent of the surface of the Earth; the remainder is covered by oceanic crust. The ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Earth’s crust looks solid from the surface, but it is broken into a shifting mosaic of slabs that slowly rearrange oceans and continents. Understanding how those tectonic plates first formed is one of ...

From time to time, when Earth's tectonic plates shift, the planet emits a long, slow belch of carbon dioxide. In a new modeling study published in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, R. Dietmar ...

Venus, a scorching wasteland of a planet according to scientists, may have once had tectonic plate movements similar to those believed to have occurred on early Earth, a new study found. PROVIDENCE, R ...

Announcing a new publication for Geosystems and Geoenvironment journal. Geosystems and Geoenvironment is a quarterly international interdisciplinary journal in English that publishes high quality ...

One of Earth’s defining features is its plate tectonics, a phenomenon that shapes the planet’s surface and creates some of its most catastrophic events, like earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic ...