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, a consequence of modern plate tectonics. A new study reports evidence of a transition in multiple locations around the world, 3.8-3.6 billion years ago, from stable “protocrust” to pressures and processes that look a lot like modern subduction, suggesting a time when plates first got moving. Credit: Nikolas Midttun, CC-BY

Sink or Swim: The fate of sinking tectonic plates depends on...

Early Earth was bombarded by meteors which played a crucial role in disrupting and recycling Earth’s first crust.

Early Earth’s first crust composition discovery rewrites geological timeline

Biogeochemical cycles billions of years ago. A complex web of interactions between geological features including volcanoes, subsurface mantle, oceans and the atmosphere created the chemical mixture necessary for early life to oxygenate our atmosphere. ©2025 Watanabe et al. CC-BY-ND

Are volcanoes behind the oxygen we breathe?

Large conical shatter cones within the Pilbara Craton, Western Australia, provide visible proof of a meteorite impact 3.5 billion years ago. Credit: Chris Kirkland, Curtin University

World’s oldest impact crater found, rewriting Earth’s ancient history

Artistic view of Earth’s interior during mantle solidification in the first hundreds of millions of years of Earth’s history. Gravitational segregation of dense, iron-rich magma (in orange) likely formed a basal magma ocean atop the core, that can explain the present-day structure of the lower mantle.

Earliest days of Earth’s formation

Evan Saitta, the paper’s lead author, with an emperor penguin in the Field Museum’s bird collections. Photographer(s): Kate Golembiewski (c) Field Museum

When birds lose the ability to fly, their bodies change faster...

Detailed highlights of the rock sample at Biloela in Queensland.

Dozens of 3-toed dinosaurs leave their mark in Queensland

At the 12th day of incubation, feather buds exhibit longitudinal domains of cell density that correspond to the barbs of the future down feather. © Rory Cooper & Michel Milinkovitch (CC BY)

From dinosaurs to birds: the origins of feather formation

Dryolestes, a Late Jurassic relative of the Cretaceous therians. Credit: Artist James Brown, courtesy of Pamela Gill

Mammals were adapting from life in the trees to living on...

The juvenile vertebra of the pterosaur is seen in comparison to an adult-sized one. The bite occurred some 76 million years ago Credit: University of Reading

Rare pterosaur fossil reveals crocodilian bite 76m years ago

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