Researchers used small zircon crystals to unlock information about magmas and plate tectonic activity in early Earth. The research provides chemical evidence that plate tectonics was most likely ...

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, ...

Philip Heron receives funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. He works for the University of Toronto. University of Toronto provides funding as a founding partner of ...

Researchers have produced a new estimate for the origin of Earth's plate tectonics—the movement of large chunks of the planet's outer layer, or crust. Although there is broad consensus that plate ...

The emergence of plate tectonics in the late 1960s led to a paradigm shift from fixism to mobilism of global tectonics, providing a unifying context for the previously disparate disciplines of Earth ...

Earth’s plate tectonics could be a passing phase. After simulating rock and heat flow throughout a planet’s lifetime, researchers have proposed that plate tectonics is just one stage of a planet’s ...

Our planet is in constant flux. Tectonic plates—the large slabs of rock that divide Earth’s crust so that it looks like a cracked eggshell—jostle about in fits and starts that continuously reshape our ...

The theory of Plate tectonics – developed from Alfred Wegener’s theory of Continental Drift to explain the movement of the continents – has become the prevailing theory underpinning our understanding ...

The transition to plate tectonics started with the help of lubricating sediments, scraped by glaciers from the slopes of Earth's first continents, according to new research. Earth's outer layer is ...

Earth's surface is a turbulent place. Mountains rise, continents merge and split, and earthquakes shake the ground. All of these processes result from plate tectonics, the movement of enormous chunks ...

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 ...