Beneath the American Midwest, on the continent of North America, the underside of Earth's crust is dripping into the planetary interior. There, blobs of molten rock are coalescing in the upper mantle ...

What is a continent when over 94 percent of it is under the water? Zealandia is an extensive belt of continental crust around New Zealand and New Caledonia, that has long been the sort of ...

Like a moth in a cocoon, the metamorphosis of Earth's crust from molten goop to solid land is hidden from view, leaving scientists to guess at how the eons-long process unfolds. Using nearly four ...

Far beneath central Turkey, a dense slab of rock is peeling away from the bottom of the continent and sinking into the mantle, tugging the surface down and subtly reshaping the landscape. The process ...

A study of the East African Rift reveals that ancient heating and dehydration can strengthen continental crust, reshaping how and where continents break apart.

While many science books would have you believe the Earth's lower mantle—the layer deep below the crust—is smooth, it's actually made up of a mountainous-like topography that moves and changes just ...

(CNN) — Seismologist Deborah Kilb was wading through California earthquake records from the past four decades when she noticed something odd — a series of deep earthquakes that had occurred under the ...

Continental clues: Modern continental rocks carry chemical signatures from the very start of our planet’s history, challenging current theories about plate tectonics. Researchers have made a new ...

(Left) Schematic illustration of a kink structure. (Center) Kink bands observed in mudstone near Fort Island, Rhode Island. (Right) Large-scale kink structure in Southern California, USA. Your first ...

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

Earth is the only known planet which has plate tectonics today. The constant movement of these giant slabs of rock over the planet’s magma creates continents – and may have even helped create life. In ...

Reservoirs of hydrogen gas that form naturally in Earth's crust could help humans decarbonize. The challenge now is finding these accumulations and working out how best to mine them, experts say. When ...