A massive 37-million-year-old underwater canyon reveals the fossil trace of an ancient Atlantic tectonic boundary.

When tectonic plates sink into the Earth they look like slinky snakes! That's according to a study published in Nature, which helps answer a long standing question about what happens to tectonic ...

Geophysicists can use a new model to explain the behavior of a tectonic plate sinking into a subduction zone in the Earth's mantle: the plate becomes weak and thus more deformable when mineral grains ...

This groundbreaking research offers a comprehensive reconstruction of Earth’s tectonic evolution from 1.8 Ga to the present, bridging critical gaps in pre-Pangean plate dynamics. By merging three ...

For millions of years, Earth’s moving plates have sculpted continents, carved oceans, and built massive mountain ranges. Yet some of these giant structures vanished deep into the mantle, hidden from ...

The Mendocino Triple Junction is the meeting point of three tectonic plates. Using data from tiny earthquakes, researchers at USGS, UC Davis and CU Boulder propose a new model for this seismic zone.

About 150 million years ago, a massive tectonic mega-plate stretched across the Earth, spanning roughly a quarter of the size of the Pacific Ocean. Its jagged contours ran all the way through the ...

Off the rugged north coast of California, one of the most seismically volatile corners of the United States is yielding a new and unsettling secret. By tracking swarms of earthquakes far too small for ...

An earthquake-generating chunk of tectonic plate has been discovered beneath Northern California. It’s attached to the bottom of the North American plate like gum stuck to a shoe. Using abundant, tiny ...