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 ...

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 ...

Using information from inside the rocks on Earth's surface, we have reconstructed the plate tectonics of the planet over the last 1.8 billion years. It is the first time Earth's geological record has ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. This is how the western hemisphere of the Earth may have appeared ...

Magnetic data locked in ancient crystals suggest that life may have emerged long before the Earth’s tectonic plates started moving. If the finding holds true, it would overturn the conventional notion ...

On Earth, the land moves. Over millions of years, continents shift and the entire surface of the planet reshapes itself. The driver of all this is plate tectonics: Earth’s surface is divided into ...