Long ago, Earth's outer shell cracked into pieces, which we now call tectonic plates. In a new study, scientists investigated the origins of plate tectonics and found its history rooted in Earth.

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 ...

For decades, scientists have accepted a particular theory regarding the evolution Earth’s plate tectonics, but a recent study published in Nature Geoscience could defy this as a team of researchers ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky. Are we alone, and if so, why? So far, the search for ...

Readers who went to school before the late 1960s will probably remember that their science teachers couldn't explain why South America and Africa seemed to fit together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.

Earth's geographical surfaces have been formed over millions of years, and various current theories aim to explain their formation. The most popular theory, called the "plate tectonics theory," states ...

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 ...

Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth's outer layer is made up of plates, which have moved throughout Earth's history. The theory explains the how and why behind mountains, volcanoes, and ...

His framework offered a new way to think about continental drift and revolutionized the study of earthquakes, volcanoes and evolution. By Clay Risen W. Jason Morgan, who in 1967 developed the theory ...

A new study suggests that tiny, mineral grains — squeezed and mixed over millions of years — set in motion the chain of events that plunge massive tectonic plates deep into the Earth’s interior. The ...

W. Jason Morgan, a Princeton University geologist who laid out an influential new vision of our evolving planet, attributing the most powerful upheavals — earthquakes, volcanoes and the formation of ...