Scientists have developed a new model of Earth’s tectonic plates that provides fresh insights into the planet’s geological history and a better understanding of natural hazards like earthquakes and ...

The Andes Mountains are much taller than plate tectonic theories predict they should be, a fact that has puzzled geologists for decades. Mountain-building models tend to focus on the deep-seated ...

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 ...

"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 ...

No one is at their best when they are dehydrated and that goes for tectonic plates too. Researchers using a thermomechanical model of the Alaska subduction zone indicates that plate dehydration is at ...

Watch the Earth's tectonic plates grow, shrink, and jostle for position in this new model of the last billion years on the planet.

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 ...

In 2021, geologists animated a video that shows how Earth's tectonic plates moved over the last billion years. The plates move together and apart at the speed of fingernail growth, and the video ...

For hundreds of millions of years, Earth’s climate has warmed and cooled with natural fluctuations in the level of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. Over the past century, humans have pushed CO₂ ...

The Indian Ocean Geoid Low (IOGL), a significant gravitational anomaly, has puzzled scientists for decades. Research suggests ...

Scientists have reconstructed a long-lost tectonic plate that may have given rise to an arc of volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean 60 million years ago. The plate, dubbed Resurrection, has long been ...