The dance of the continents has been reshaping Earth for billions of years, creating the landscapes we walk on today.

Ancient plate tectonics in the Archean period differs from modern plate tectonics in the Phanerozoic period because of the higher mantle temperatures inside the early Earth, the thicker basaltic crust ...

The plate tectonics that determine the shape of our continents may have originated from a huge impact billions of years ago. This huge collision with the Earth, thought to have occurred around 4.5 ...

Early in Earth’s history, the heat left over from the collision that formed the Moon left its surface an ocean of magma. As it cooled, its crust was frequently shattered by massive impacts that ...

New research hints that plate tectonics began earlier than 4 billion years ago — not long after Earth had formed. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here ...

Rocks in Australia preserve evidence that plates in Earth’s crust were moving 3.5 billion years ago, a finding that pushes back the beginnings of plate tectonics by hundreds of millions of years.

On Earth, the land moves. Over millions of years, continents shift and the entire surface of the planet reshapes itself. The driver of all this is plate tectonics: Earth’s surface is divided into ...

Scientists studying rocks in South Africa report evidence for the earliest known earthquake triggered by plate tectonics. The temblor struck more than 3 billion years ago. The rocks preserve telltale ...

Plate tectonics is a highly complex phenomenon that underpins almost every geological process and our understanding of Earth. Increasingly sophisticated computers and statistical approaches, including ...

In the heart of Asia, deep underground, two huge tectonic plates are crashing into each other — a violent but slow-motion bout of geological bumper cars that over time has sculpted the soaring ...

The closest technological species to us in the Milky Way galaxy could be 33,000 light years away and their civilization would have to be at least 280,000 years, and possibly millions of years, old if ...