A recent study has uncovered a remarkable geological process occurring deep beneath the Midwestern United States: a buried remnant of an ancient tectonic plate, known as the Farallon slab, is pulling the underside of the North American crust down into the mantle. This phenomenon is resulting in what scientists describe as “drips” of rock that …
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Researchers have made a groundbreaking discovery that reshapes our understanding of Earth’s first crust and the early geological history of the planet. A new study published in Nature suggests that the very first crust, which formed around 4.5 billion years ago, already possessed the unique chemical signature found in today’s continental crust. This challenges the …
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Researchers studying Türkiye’s Central Anatolian Plateau have uncovered evidence of lithospheric dripping, a newly discovered phenomenon in plate tectonics. This process involves Earth’s crust slowly sinking, or “dripping,” into the deeper layers of the planet, altering surface geology over time. The Konya Basin, a depression within the plateau, exhibits signs of this process as the …
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A 4-billion year old piece of Earth’s crust the size of Ireland has been detected beneath Western Australia according to new research. However this piece of crust is not the oldest. The oldest is in the Canadian Shield on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay which is 4.3 billions years old. The Earth is 4.5 …
In South America, beneath the Andes mountains, the Earth’s crust is dripping into the planet’s interior. This has been occurring for millions of years-a long geological process that has produced visible wrinkling and other features on the surface.
A new study shows Earth’s first continents, known as cratons, emerged from the ocean between 3.3 and 3.2 billion years ago. Previous estimates suggested that large-scale craton emergence took place roughly 2.5 billion years ago.
The continents which number five, six ,seven, or even more depending on the model used are still very poorly understood. They form the emerged part of the Earth’s continental crust. The continents have varied structures as well as rocks of different compositions and ages, and this diversity makes them difficult to study.
Doctor Sophie Coulsen and her colleagues explained in a recent paper that, as glacial ice from Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic Islands melts, Earth’s crust beneath these land masses warps, an impact that can be measured hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles away.
Earth’s collection of interlocking plates is unique in the solar system. Scientists connect it to our planet’s other special features, such as its stable atmosphere, protective magnetic field and the abundance of complex life.
In seafloor trenches around the world, slabs of oceanic crust fall slowly into the mantle, while new slabs are formed at mid ocean ridges, where magma emerges at the seams separating tectonic plates. Beginning about 15 million years ago, ocean crust production declined by a third over 10 million years to a slow pace that …
