A unique rock formation in China holds clues that tectonic plates subducted, or went underneath other plates, during the Archean eon (4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago), just as they do nowadays, a ...

In modern subduction zones—regions around the world that have one tectonic plate sliding past another—one area can act like molasses for seismic waves. These anomalous areas are called low-velocity ...

For millions of years, Earth’s shifting plates have shaped continents, formed oceans, and built towering mountain ranges. But ...

Earth’s crust looks solid from the surface, but it is broken into a shifting mosaic of slabs that slowly rearrange oceans and continents. Understanding how those tectonic plates first formed is one of ...

Scientists at the University of Southampton have answered one of the most puzzling questions in plate tectonics: how and why "stable" parts of continents gradually rise to form some of the planet's ...