The northern end of the Cascadia subduction zone, where the Juan de Fuca (JdF) and Explorer (Exp) plates slowly move beneath the North American plate, is gradually shutting down piece by piece, with small pieces of the plate breaking off while the remaining plate continues to subduct until the next tear occurs.

Earth is splitting open beneath the Pacific Northwest

San Andreas Fault

Twin threat: Cascadia and San Andreas faults may be seismically linked

Virginia Tech geobiologist Shuhai Xiao and collaborators reported a 550 million-year-old sea sponge fossil, filling in a gap in the evolutionary family tree of one of the earliest animals. Photo by Spencer Coppage for Virginia Tech.

A rare fossil reveals that Earth’s earliest sponges were hiding in...

Reconstruction of Masripithecus moghraensis by Mauricio Antón. Credit: Copyrights belong to Professor Hesham Sallam

Masripithecus: A new Miocene ape from Egypt sheds light on the...

Decompression and cooling occur synchronously during thermal quench fragmentation. Credit: Nature (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10317-w

Unraveling active magma by drilling in the heart of volcanoes

We know very little about the processes that lead to a re-eruption of supervolcanoes, such as the mostly underwater Kikai caldera in Japan, and are therefore ill-equipped to make predictions. Credit: Seama Nobukazu

Japan’s giant caldera volcano is refilling 7,300 years later

The process in action on an oyster shell. Credit: Trinity College Dublin

Discarded oyster shells may pull rare earth metals from polluted water

View of Naples from the Hermitage of Camaldoli with Mt. Vesuvius, Gulf of Naples, Sorrento Peninsula and the Eastern edge of Campi Flegrei. Taken while setting up measuring stations. Credit: Simone Ceska, GFZ

New model finds complex earthquake patterns of the Phlegraean Fields near...

Illustration of the dynamo mechanism that generates the Earth's magnetic field: convection currents of fluid metal in the Earth's outer core, driven by heat flow from the inner core, organized into rolls by the Coriolis force, generate circulating electric currents, which supports the magnetic field. Credit: Andrew Z. Colvin/wikipedia

Geodynamo Theory: How Earth’s Core Creates the Magnetic Field

Earth

Seismic Tomography: Visualizing Density Anomalies in the Lower Mantle

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