An international team has made a significant breakthrough in understanding the tectonic evolution of terrestrial planets.

The plate tectonics that determine the shape of our continents may have originated from a huge impact billions of years ago. This huge collision with the Earth, thought to have occurred around 4.5 ...

A newly identified tectonic "regime" may rewrite our understanding of how rocky worlds evolve, scientists report in a new ...

The Himalayas are a prime example of how tectonic plate motion can manipulate the earth in extraordinary ways. These colliding plates resulted in the formation of the highest mountain range on the ...

The face of the Earth has changed drastically over its life, with plates shifting and sinking. Now, geologists at the University of Houston claim to have found the remains of an ancient tectonic plate ...

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 ...

A new study suggests that tiny, mineral grains — squeezed and mixed over millions of years — set in motion the chain of events that plunge massive tectonic plates deep into the Earth’s interior. The ...

Geologists think early Earth may have looked much like Iceland—where jet-black lava fields extend as far as the eye can see, inky mountainsides rise steeply above the clouds and stark black-sand ...

Plate tectonics churns the icy exterior of Jupiter’s moon Europa, researchers report September 7 in Nature Geoscience. The finding marks the first evidence of plate tectonics elsewhere in the universe ...

Patrice F. Rey receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Plate tectonics – the large-scale movement of Earth’s lithosphere or outer layers – started around three billion years ago, but ...

A new paper has revealed that tectonic activity on this planet—a unique feature in the solar system—could have been spurred by a stream of asteroid impacts. Previously, computer models have shown that ...