When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Plate tectonics is the means through which mountains are formed. The Baird Mountains in Alaska’s ...

Scientists have uncovered the oldest direct evidence yet that Earth’s tectonic plates were on the move 3.5 billion years ago. By analyzing magnetic fingerprints in ancient rocks, they reconstructed ...

Earthquakes and volcanism occur as a result of plate tectonics. The movement of tectonic plates themselves is largely driven by the process known as subduction. The question of how new active ...

Scientists have taken a journey back in time to unlock the mysteries of Earth’s early history, using tiny mineral crystals called zircons to study plate tectonics billions of years ago. The research ...

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, ...

In 2016, the geochemists Jonas Tusch and Carsten Münker hammered a thousand pounds of rock from the Australian Outback and airfreighted it home to Cologne, Germany. Five years of sawing, crushing, ...

Creative destruction: a thinner ocean plate sides under a continental plate, melting and recycling the ocean crust into the Earth’s interior and birthing volcanoes in this illustration of subduction, ...

Direct evidence of the movements of tectonic plates has been found in some of the world’s oldest rocks, in the Pilbara Craton, Western Australia. This evidence dates back 3.5 billion years; the ...

For example, the researchers can now argue against phenomena called "true polar wander" and "stagnant lid tectonics," which can both cause the Earth's surface to shift but aren't part of modern-style ...

You probably know that the Earth's crust is broken up into huge tectonic plates that slide under, over and past each other, slowly building mountains, forming new oceans and triggering earthquakes.