While there’s often much to-do about tectonic plates, especially when their various subductions and transform sliding creates widespread devastation, cratons rarely nab the limelight. That’s not ...

Our planet has an outer layer made up of several plates, which move relative to one another. While we may take this knowledge for granted, this theory of plate tectonics was only formulated in the ...

A long-dead tectonic plate is still reshaping the continent from below. The ancient Farallon plate, now deep in the mantle, is driving mantle flows that pull down pieces of North America’s lithosphere ...

A fascinating new study reveals that a massive chunk of Earth’s crust, buried deep beneath the Midwest, is slowly pulling large parts of North America’s crust into the Earth’s mantle. This process, ...

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 ...

It's the first time Earth's geologic record — information found inside rocks — has been used to create an animation of this kind. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

Alan Collins receives funding from The Australian Research Council (he is an ARC Laureate Fellow), AuScope and the MinEx CRC. He also has funding from a number of State and Federal Government bodies ...