Throughout Earth’s history, the continents have been constantly on the move, converging and diverging in cycles that have shaped the planet’s surface for billions of years. This process, known as ...

New research has dramatically reshaped our understanding of Earth’s early geological history, overturning traditional beliefs ...

Far beneath the ocean's surface, where mountain belts rise and ancient oceanic crust lies hidden, a long-lost tectonic plate ...

In California, where the next “Big One” is an always-looming threat, some lessons learned from the 1925 Santa Barbara quake ...

Although evidence for this theory is based in the geologic record ... known as subduction “invasion” or “infection” where subduction—that is one tectonic plate sliding beneath another—sort of spreads ...

Tectonic map of the Philippine Sea Plate, highlighting the different microplates that formed as a result of oceanic spreading at different spreading centers.

Plate tectonics, or the recycling of Earth’s crust, may have begun much earlier than previously thought—and may be a big reason that our planet harbors life ...

Plate tectonic theory is among the most brilliant insights in all of intellectual history because it so elegantly explains so much that for so long had eluded us.

Emerging evidence suggests that plate tectonics, or the recycling of Earth's crust, may have begun much earlier than previously thought — and may be a big reason that our planet harbors life.

Earth surface is covered with rigid plates that move, crash into each other and dive into the planet's interior. But when did this process begin?

In a new study, a team of researchers suggests that 4 billion years ago, plate tectonics likely looked closer to what we experience today than previously thought. The team published its findings ...

While it's the reigning theory now, the road to acceptance was long and bumpy for plate tectonics, which describes how large portions of Earth's crust slide, grind, rise and sink ever so slowly across ...