Subduction zones are fundamental engines of plate tectonics, where oceanic lithosphere descends into the mantle, driving seismicity, magmatism and crustal recycling. The interaction of a subducting ...

Deep below the Tyrrhenian Sea offshore Italy, scientists drilled into what they thought would be dark mantle rock—and found ...

Earth's crust ranges from 5 to 70 kilometers in thickness and serves as the planet's outermost layer. This thin shell represents less than one percent of Earth's total mass, yet it's the only layer we ...

Africa’s Turkana Rift Zone, a hotbed of hominin fossils, is caught in the act of “necking," a critical transition toward continental breakup.

Geoscientists have uncovered a missing link in the enigmatic story of how the continents developed- - a revised origin story that doesn't require the start of plate tectonics or any external factor to ...

Image: Tiny crystals called zircons are used to date oceanic crust. A newly developed method that detects tiny bits of zircon in rock reliably predicts the age of ocean crust more than 99 percent of ...

Continents and oceans have scientific definitions that underpin international law. The idea of dividing the world into geographical zones is ancient. Sovereignty and influence over natural resources ...

The eruptions of some mid-ocean volcanoes may be the echoes of supercontinent breakups that persisted for tens of millions of years after the rearrangement of Earth's surface, a new study suggests.

All around the world, from the Red Sea to the deep ocean ridges of the Atlantic, lurk more than a dozen geological misfits. These scraps of continental crust are found in the middle of oceans, ...

Earth is often imagined as a stable world, ancient, solid, and mostly unchanging beneath the surface. In reality, the planet ...

The ChemCam laser instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover has turned its beam onto some unusually light-colored rocks on Mars, and the results are surprisingly similar to Earth’s granitic continental ...