The tiny Juan de Fuca plate is largely responsible for the volcanoes that dot the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The plates make up Earth's outer shell, called the lithosphere. (This includes ...

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

Different plate tectonic settings produce distinctive basin environments where sedimentary rocks are deposited. Download a chart to use in class and an activity for practicing with these concepts: ...

Some great ideas shake up the world. For centuries, the outermost layer of Earth was thought to be static, rigid, locked in place. But the theory of plate tectonics has rocked this picture of the ...

For the first time in history, scientists have observed the rupture of a tectonic plate in a subduction zone in real time.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Despite being our closest planetary neighbor, Venus is a pretty ...

If you think about mountain ranges like the Andes or the Himalayas, you can come up with multiple factors that must affect their size and shape. There’s the collision of tectonic plates that squeezes ...

A small tectonic plate that is forming on the continent of Africa is rotating in the opposite direction to all the others, and scientists believe they now know the reason why. The microplate, or rift ...

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 ...

A team of geologists believes they have found the lost plate known as Resurrection in northern Canada by using existing mantle tomography images. The existence of a tectonic plate called Resurrection ...

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

Subduction zones, where one tectonic plate dives underneath another, drive the world's most devastating earthquakes and tsunamis. How do these danger zones come to be? A study in Geology presents ...