Image: Tiny crystals called zircons are used to date oceanic crust. A newly developed method that detects tiny bits of zircon in rock reliably predicts the age of ocean crust more than 99 percent of ...

Memorizing seven continents feels settled, like learning the alphabet. A new study argues the ground rules are less tidy.

An ancient slab of Earth's crust buried deep beneath the Midwest is sucking huge swatches of present-day's North American crust down into the mantle, researchers say. The slab's pull has created giant ...

Researchers created a seismic map of Earth's interior beneath the southeastern Pacific Ocean and discovered an ancient slab of oceanic crust that appears to be stuck midway through the mantle. When ...

Researchers describe zircons from the Andes mountains of Patagonia. Although the zircons formed when tectonic plates were colliding, they have a chemical signature associated with when the plates were ...

The mid-ocean ridge runs through the oceans like a suture. Where Earth's plates move apart, new oceanic crust is continuously ...

A previously unknown connection between geological atmospheric carbon dioxide cycles and the fluctuating capacity of the ocean crust to store carbon dioxide has been uncovered by two geoscientists ...