This study is led by Prof. Zhong-Hai Li (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences). The present solid Earth is actually active, with new plates generating in the mid-ocean ridges and some old plates ...

The initiation of plate subduction on Earth may occur before 3 billion years ago or even Hadean. Subduction is the core process of plate tectonics, which gradually lead to the co-evolution of ...

Our planet's lithosphere is broken into several tectonic plates. Their configuration is ever-shifting, as supercontinents are assembled and broken up, and oceans form, grow, and then start to close in ...

We finally know where two giant blobs in Earth's middle layer came from — and they're a mismatched pair. These strange regions in Earth's mantle, known as "large low velocity provinces" (LLVPs), are ...

Fresh evidence suggests early Earth wasn’t locked under a rigid stagnant lid but was already experiencing intense subduction.

An unprecedented observation of a major geological process is currently taking place off the North American coast. For the first time, a scientific team has documented the progressive ...

The plates — interlocking slabs of crust that float on Earth's viscous upper mantle — were created by a process similar to the subduction seen today when one plate dives below another, the report says ...

Several billion-year-old rocks tell the story of the planet’s transition from alien landscape to one of continents, oceans, and ultimately life A new study from scientists at Scripps Institution of ...

Geoscientists at the University of Toronto and Istanbul Technical University have discovered a process in plate tectonics that shows tremendous damage occurs to areas of Earth’s crust long before it ...

Around 800 million years ago, during the Tonian period, the Yangtze Block in South China experienced significant tectonic activity, in which the ancient supercontinent Rodinia broke off from the area ...

Scientists have discovered a crack in the Earth's crust that threatens to pull North America and Europe closer together and cause the Atlantic Ocean to vanish in about 220 million years. Researchers ...