Researchers describe zircons from the Andes mountains of Patagonia. Although the zircons formed when tectonic plates were colliding, they have a chemical signature associated with when the plates were ...

In deep Earth, rocks take up and release water all the time, and the effects can be wide reaching. Dehydration can cause rocks to crack and trigger earthquakes, and over geologic timescales, this ...

The Andes Mountains are much taller than plate tectonic theories predict they should be, a fact that has puzzled geologists for decades. Mountain-building models tend to focus on the deep-seated ...

Antarctica, a land of frozen mystery, holds secrets hidden beneath its thick ice sheets. One such secret is a colossal mountain range, the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, which has puzzled scientists ...

Massive tectonic collisions in the tropics may have caused Earth's last three great ice ages. Before each of these ice ages, new research finds, collisions between continents and island arcs built ...

An eons-long collision that created the Himalayas, the world's tallest mountain range, may also be splitting Tibet apart into two pieces, new research suggests. The collision of the Indian and ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. Based on a series of models considering how the continents were ...

Far from a process of smooth, inevitable ascendance, the formation of the iconic Andes Mountains was downright explosive. As the peaks rose skyward along the western coast of South America dozens of ...

This artist’s concept of the large Quetzalpetlatl Corona located in Venus’ southern hemisphere depicts active volcanism and a subduction zone, where the foreground crust plunges into the planet’s ...

The opening and closing of the Rocas Verdes Basin, a back-arc basin in Patagonia, as described by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin in a study published in Geology. Panels B and C ...

Vast, quasi-circular features on Venus's surface may reveal that the planet has ongoing tectonics, according to new research based on data gathered more than 30 years ago by NASA's Magellan mission.