A careful analysis of the complex boundary where four tectonic plates meet reveals that one of the slabs is tearing itself ...

Ancient rocks on the coast of Oman that were once driven deep down toward Earth's mantle may reveal new insights into subduction, an important tectonic process that fuels volcanoes and creates ...

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 ...

In deep Earth, rocks take up and release water all the time, and the effects can be wide reaching. Dehydration can cause rocks to crack and trigger earthquakes, and over geologic timescales, this ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. — At the boundaries between tectonic plates, narrow rifts can form as Earth’s crust slowly pulls apart. But how, exactly, does this rifting happen? Does pressure from magma rising from ...

Geological processes shape the planet Earth and are in many ways essential to our planet's habitability for life. One important geological process is plate tectonics – the drifting, colliding and ...

The opening and closing of the Rocas Verdes Basin, a back-arc basin in Patagonia, as described by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin in a study published in Geology. Panels B and C ...

The discovery, made just off the coast of Vancouver Island in the Pacific Ocean, shows that a section of the oceanic crust is ...

A new study makes the case that the solar system’s hellish second planet once may have had plate tectonics that could have made it more hospitable to life. By Kenneth Chang Venus today is not like ...