In the Nature PastCast series, we delve into the archives to tell the stories behind some of Nature’s biggest papers. This year, Nature celebrates its 150th birthday. To mark this anniversary we’re ...

A handful of ancient zircon crystals found in South Africa hold the oldest evidence of subduction, a key element of plate tectonics, according to a new study published in the open access journal AGU ...

This study is led by Prof. Yong-Fei Zheng at University of Science and Technology of China. It focuses on the development of tectonic processes along convergent plate margins through inspection of ...

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Rare minerals show evidence of an ancient subduction zone. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Earthquakes and volcanism occur as a result of plate tectonics. The movement of tectonic plates themselves is largely driven by the process known as subduction. The question of how new active ...

Creative destruction: a thinner ocean plate sides under a continental plate, melting and recycling the ocean crust into the Earth’s interior and birthing volcanoes in this illustration of subduction, ...

In 2016, the geochemists Jonas Tusch and Carsten Münker hammered a thousand pounds of rock from the Australian Outback and airfreighted it home to Cologne, Germany. Five years of sawing, crushing, ...

The dance of the continents has been reshaping Earth for billions of years, creating the landscapes we walk on today. Scientists are unlocking secrets about how plate tectonics forged our modern world ...

New data indicating that Earth’s surface broke up about 3.2 billion years ago helps clarify how plate tectonics drove the evolution of complex life. In 2016, the geochemists Jonas Tusch and Carsten ...

Earth’s crust looks solid from the surface, but it is broken into a shifting mosaic of slabs that slowly rearrange oceans and continents. Understanding how those tectonic plates first formed is one of ...