Papers presented in a special symposium at the joint annual meeting of the Geological and Mineralogical Associations of Canada at St. John's in May, 1974. Tectonic settings for emplacement of ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Are we alone, and if so, why? So far, the search for ...

Ancient plate tectonics in the Archean period differs from modern plate tectonics in the Phanerozoic period because of the higher mantle temperatures inside the early Earth, the thicker basaltic crust ...

When tectonic plates sink into the Earth they look like slinky snakes! That's according to a study published in Nature, which helps answer a long standing question about what happens to tectonic ...

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 ...

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 ...

Take a hike along the mountain belts scattered around the Adriatic Sea, and you may find yourself clambering across the crumpled leftovers of a long-lost continent. This rocky jumble represents the ...

The Earth’s mantle acts like a giant churn, circulating cool oceanic crust downward toward the core, where it heats up into a goopy solid and then rises again—a process that powers everything from ...

New research hints that plate tectonics began earlier than 4 billion years ago — not long after Earth had formed. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here ...

Our world’s surface is a jumble of jostling tectonic plates, with new ones emerging as others are pulled under. The ongoing cycle keeps our continents in motion and drives life on Earth. But what ...