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 ...

The dance of the continents has been reshaping Earth for billions of years, creating the landscapes we walk on today.

A long-lost tectonic plate dubbed 'Pontus' that was a quarter of the size of the Pacific Ocean was discovered by chance by scientists studying ancient rocks in Borneo. When you purchase through links ...

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." The modern understanding of the plate tectonic cycle predicts that remnants of submerged plates will be ...

For millions of years, Earth’s moving plates have sculpted continents, carved oceans, and built massive mountain ranges. Yet some of these giant structures vanished deep into the mantle, hidden from ...

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 ...

Earth’s crust may have gone on the move roughly 3.8 billion years ago. “Earth is actually quite distinct to other planets, in that it has plate tectonics,” says study coauthor Nadja Drabon, a ...