We often affiliate plate tectonics with earthquakes, as we are all taught in school that the shifting of plates leads to big shakes. But plate tectonics serve a far more important job to the planet ...

• Due to a lack of data, the studies available so far underestimated the seismic and tsunami risk of these large faults. A new study led by the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) in Barcelona and ...

A hidden shard of ancient crust has been detected where California’s San Andreas system collides with the Cascadia subduction ...

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 ...

Using information from inside the rocks on Earth’s surface, my colleagues and I have reconstructed the plate tectonics of the planet over the last 1.8 billion years. It is the first time Earth’s ...

Map of Earth's principal tectonic plates. Earth's lithosphere. Major and minor plates. arrows indicate direction of movement at plate boundaries. Vector illustration. Billions of years ago, Earth's ...

Based on a series of models considering how the continents were assembled over time, a team of researchers at the University of Adelaide created an updated map of Earth's tectonic plates. The map will ...

Scientists have discovered a new layer of partly molten rock under the Earth's crust that might help settle a long-standing debate about how tectonic plates move. Researchers had previously identified ...

Geologists have reconstructed a massive and previously unknown tectonic plate that was once one-quarter the size of the Pacific Ocean. The team had predicted its existence over 10 years ago based on ...

Earthquakes and volcanism occur as a result of plate tectonics. The movement of tectonic plates themselves is largely driven by the process known as subduction. The question of how new active ...