Waves in Earth's mantle created by the rifting of continents may peel the planet's crust from below, feeding volcanoes in the middle of the ocean.

The processes that form continental crust from the denser basaltic rocks of the upper mantle may make the lower lithosphere denser than the underlying mantle. One theory holds that the lower ...

Earth’s crust looks solid from the surface, but it is broken into a shifting mosaic of slabs that slowly rearrange oceans and ...

New experiments have re-created the genesis of Earth’s first continents. By putting the squeeze on water and oceanic rocks under intense heat, researchers produced material that closely resembles the ...

The ChemCam laser instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover has turned its beam onto some unusually light-colored rocks on Mars, and the results are surprisingly similar to Earth’s granitic continental ...

How do you make half the mass of two continents disappear? To answer that question, you first need to discover that it’s missing. That’s what a trio of University of Chicago geoscientists and their ...

Earth's continents have been leaking nutrients into the ocean for at least 3.7 billion years, new research suggests. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Scientists have shown that south east Iceland is underlain by continental crust. An international team, including researchers at the University of Liverpool, have shown that south east Iceland is ...

The Earth's seven continents may seem like terra firma, but geologists know the "firma" part doesn't prove out. The buoyant shelves of granite that tower miles above the seafloor have a protean past ...

The early Earth might have been habitable much earlier than thought, according to new research. The early Earth might have been habitable much earlier than thought, according to new research from a ...