Earth’s crust looks solid from the surface, but it is broken into a shifting mosaic of slabs that slowly rearrange oceans and continents. Understanding how those tectonic plates first formed is one of ...

New findings provide a greater understanding of plate subduction, or how tectonic plates slide beneath one another. This recycling of surface materials and volatile elements deep into the Earth's ...

The Earth with the upper mantle revealed. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered a previously unknown layer of partly molten rock in a key region just below the tectonic ...