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 ...

Scientists have uncovered a hidden geological process where fragments of continents are slowly stripped from below and swept deep into the oceanic mantle, sparking volcanic activity in unexpected ...

The knowledge of how Earth recycled its crust revealed that fragments of continents slowly peeled away and swept deep beneath ...

In 1981, scientists discovered one of the thinnest portions of the Earth’s crust — a 1-mile (1.6 kilometers) thick, earthquake-prone spot under the Atlantic Ocean where the American and African ...

The continents we know are not stable entities. According to a study published in Nature Geoscience, their base undergoes ...

Earth’s mantle has cooled by 6–11 °C every 100 million years since the Archaean, 2.5 billion years ago. In more recent times, the surface heat loss that led to this temperature drop may have been ...

EDMONTON, Alberta, Sept. 19 (UPI) --How did Earth's earliest continental crust form? The world's oldest rock offers new clues, but raises more questions than answers. Scientists at the University of ...

The Earth's oceanic crust covers an enormous expanse, and is mostly buried beneath a thick layer of mud that cuts it off from the surface world. Scientists now document life deep within the oceanic ...

The continental crust is the layer of granitic, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks which form the continents and the areas of shallow seabed close to their shores, known as continental shelves. It 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 ...