(Inside Science) — Shifting, slipping and colliding tectonic plates played an essential role in the emergence and evolution of life on Earth. Such tectonic activity generated volcanoes that spewed ...

Memorizing seven continents feels settled, like learning the alphabet. A new study argues the ground rules are less tidy. The ...

Vast amounts of sediment eroded from Earth’s continents were necessary to lubricate the wheel of plate tectonics, scientists propose. The idea offers a new angle on long-standing riddles about the ...

It’s right there in the name: “plate tectonics.” Geology’s organizing theory hinges on plates—thin, interlocking pieces of Earth’s rocky skin. Plates’ movements explain earthquakes, volcanoes, ...

A study led by Prof. Yong-Fei Zheng at University of Science and Technology of China focused on the development of tectonic processes along convergent plate margins through inspection of recent ...

With tectonic plates bumping and grinding against each other, Earth is a pretty active planet. But when did this activity begin? A new study from Yale University claims to have found evidence that ...

The emergence of plate tectonics in the late 1960s led to a paradigm shift from fixism to mobilism of global tectonics, providing a unifying context for the previously disparate disciplines of Earth ...

When plate tectonics emerged in the 1960s it became a unifying theory, “the first global theory ever to be generally accepted in the entire history of earth science,” writes Harvard University science ...

A new paper has revealed that tectonic activity on this planet—a unique feature in the solar system—could have been spurred by a stream of asteroid impacts. Previously, computer models have shown that ...