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 ...

Plate tectonics churns the icy exterior of Jupiter’s moon Europa, researchers report September 7 in Nature Geoscience. The finding marks the first evidence of plate tectonics elsewhere in the universe ...

About 150 million years ago, a massive tectonic mega-plate stretched across the Earth, spanning roughly a quarter of the size of the Pacific Ocean. Its jagged contours ran all the way through the ...

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

The face of the Earth has changed drastically over its life, with plates shifting and sinking. Now, geologists at the University of Houston claim to have found the remains of an ancient tectonic plate ...

Patrice F. Rey receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Plate tectonics – the large-scale movement of Earth’s lithosphere or outer layers – started around three billion years ago, but ...

Scientists have uncovered one of the most exciting geological discoveries of the decade – the long-lost Pontus tectonic plate. This ancient “mega plate,” which once spanned an astonishing 15 million ...

A peek into the curious geology of the Pacific Northwest helps tease apart what may happen when the last bits of an oceanic plate get swallowed up. Scientists on board the R/V Thomas G. Thompson ...

A new paper has revealed that tectonic activity on this planet—a unique feature in the solar system—could have been spurred by a stream of asteroid impacts. Previously, computer models have shown that ...

A tectonic plate "lost" for 60 million years under the Pacific Ocean has been reconstructed by scientists at the University of Houston. Known as Resurrection, the plate has been a controversial topic ...