Geologists have made certain assumptions about how the crust making up our planet's earliest surface formed, but a new study has found that Earth's very first protocrust was surprisingly similar to ...

Earth’s journey through the Milky Way might have helped create the planet’s first continents. Comets may have bombarded Earth every time the early solar system traveled through our galaxy’s spiral ...

Earth's continents are slowly moving across the planet's surface due to plate tectonics, culminating in regions of crustal expansion and collision. In the latter case, high temperatures and pressures ...

In a bizarre geological twist of fate, researchers report that the very continents on which we humans call home were likely a byproduct of four-billion-year-old giant Earth impactors incredibly ...

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge in Iceland. This area is the boundary between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, which move apart ~ 2.5 cm/year. Subduction and the formation of continents, a ...

How did the continents appear on Earth? This question, crucial for understanding the emergence of civilizations and life itself, remains one of the great mysteries of the early stages of planetary ...

Earth’s continental crust may have begun forming hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought, Yale scientists say — and the reason will be obvious to anyone who has ever baked a cake ...

“To see a world in a grain of sand,” the opening sentence of the poem by William Blake, is an oft-used phrase that also captures some of what geologists do. We observe the composition of mineral ...

Chris Kirkland receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Phil Sutton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from ...