A switch from a humid to a dry climate has led the Eastern African Rift Zone to pull apart more freely, new research finds.

Seismic tremors reveal a shallow fragment of ancient tectonic plate beneath Northern California, helping explain damaging ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Plate tectonics may have played a larger role in the evolution of life on Earth than we ...

Our planet has experienced dramatic climate shifts throughout its history, oscillating between freezing "icehouse" periods ...

A hidden chunk of an ancient tectonic plate is stuck to the Pacific Ocean floor and sliding under North America, complicating ...

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 ...

Earth’s crust may have gone on the move roughly 3.8 billion years ago. “Earth is actually quite distinct to other planets, in that it has plate tectonics,” says study coauthor Nadja Drabon, a ...

Carbon released from Earth's spreading tectonic plates, not volcanoes, may have triggered major transitions between ancient ...

Scientists have taken a journey back in time to unlock the mysteries of Earth’s early history, using tiny mineral crystals called zircons to study plate tectonics billions of years ago. The research ...

By tracking swarms of very small earthquakes, seismologists are getting a new picture of the complex region where the San ...

We often affiliate plate tectonics with earthquakes, as we are all taught in school that the shifting of plates leads to big shakes. But plate tectonics serve a far more important job to the planet ...

One of Earth’s defining features is its plate tectonics, a phenomenon that shapes the planet’s surface and creates some of its most catastrophic events, like earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic ...