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 ...

“In the grand scheme of things, plate tectonics is a young theory,” says Brian Savage, a seismologist at the University of Rhode Island. “The plate-tectonic theory is 50 or 60 years old. That’s not ...

Emerging evidence suggests that plate tectonics, or the recycling of Earth's crust, may have begun much earlier than previously thought — and may be a big reason that our planet harbors life. When you ...

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 ...

New finding contradicts previous assumptions about the role of mobile plate tectonics in the development of life on Earth. Moreover, the data suggests that 'when we're looking for exoplanets that ...

The dance of the continents has been reshaping Earth for billions of years, creating the landscapes we walk on today. Scientists are unlocking secrets about how plate tectonics forged our modern world ...

Plate tectonics is a theory of geology developed to explain the phenomenon of continental drift and is currently the theory accepted by the vast majority of scientists working in this area. In the ...

Ancient zircons from the jack hills of western Australia hone date of an event that was crucial to making the planet hospitable to life Scientists led by Michael Ackerson, a research geologist at the ...

With tectonic plates bumping and grinding against each other, Earth is a pretty active planet. But when did this activity begin? A new study from Yale University claims to have found evidence that ...

Exactly 100 years ago, German geophysicist Alfred Wegener presented his theory of continental drift – the idea that the continents of Earth are gradually drifting apart. And now we have some ...

Earth surface is covered with rigid plates that move, crash into each other and dive into the planet's interior. But when did this process begin? When you purchase through links on our site, we may ...

Researchers have produced a new estimate for the origin of Earth's plate tectonics—the movement of large chunks of the planet's outer layer, or crust. Although there is broad consensus that plate ...