Computers may now be better than ever at revealing how the giant plates of rock that we live on will drift, crash and dive against each other to shape Earth throughout its history, scientists say. The ...

When it comes to 3-D puzzles, Rubik's Cube pales in comparison with the latest creation from a team of geophysicists. They have just put the finishing touches on a 20-year effort to precisely describe ...

The current theory of continental drift provides a good model for understanding terrestrial processes through history. However, while plate tectonics is able to successfully shed light on processes up ...

A cold, crusty shell of a planet that regularly kills off its occupants with violent earthquakes and massive volcanic eruptions doesn't sound like ideal habitat. But Earth's grinding plates, the ...

The present shallow marme biogeographic pattern is geologically transitory and reflects in large part the present state of the geography of continents and of lithospheric plate margins. Provincial ...

For millions of years, Earth’s moving plates have sculpted continents, carved oceans, and built massive mountain ranges. Yet some of these giant structures vanished deep into the mantle, hidden from ...

The emergence of plate tectonics is arguably Earth's defining moment, the authors of a new Nature paper write. Out of all the planets we’ve looked at carefully, Earth is the only one that has a hard ...

Meghan Bartels is a science journalist based in New York City who covers the science happening on the surface of Earth. She can be reached via email. Let's get one thing out of the way: The ...