Earth’s crust looks solid from the surface, but it is broken into a shifting mosaic of slabs that slowly rearrange oceans and continents. Understanding how those tectonic plates first formed is one of ...

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. The plate tectonics that determine the shape of our continents may have ...

A new study carried out on the floor of Pacific Ocean provides the most detailed view yet of how the earth’s mantle flows beneath the ocean’s tectonic plates. The findings, published in the journal ...

Newly published research has revealed that compositional rock anomalies within oceanic plates caused by ancient tectonics influence the trajectory and speed of the plates as they plunge deep into ...

Millions of years from now, Northern Africa could be home to a new ocean as tectonic plates pull apart along the East African Rift System, scientists say. Experts have long known that portions of the ...

For the first time in history geophysicists have witnessed the ocean floor literally splitting part at its seams in real time ...

Volcanism in the interior of oceanic plates is less well understood than volcanism in many other settings. Here we collate recent Nature Geoscience articles that provide insight into the properties ...

New findings provide a greater understanding of plate subduction, or how tectonic plates slide beneath one another. This recycling of surface materials and volatile elements deep into the Earth's ...