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

Earliest geochemical evidence of plate tectonics found in 3.8-billion-year-old crystal

Map shows location of the Shumagin Gap, location of the 2020 Simeonof and 2021 Chignik earthquakes. Map courtesy Alaska Earthquake Center.

Major 2020 Alaska quake triggered neighboring 2021 temblor

Using satellite imagery (shown above) to study the effects of a 2019 landslide on the Amalia Glacier in Patagonia, a University of Minnesota-led research team found the landslide helped stabilize the glacier and caused it to grow by about 1,000 meters over the last three years. Photo credit: Max Van Wyk de Vries

Landslides can have a major impact on glacier melt and movement

Basalt mit frischen Klinopyroxenen (credit Jonas Tusch)

Sampling the deep graveyard of Earth’s earliest crust

Vertebrate bones exposed during fieldwork in the Zhebao region of Guangxi ProvinceThe arrows indicate ribs, exposed in cross-section

Large Mesozoic Marine Reptile Described

Painting of the Mid-Ocean Ridge with rift axis by Heinrich Berann based on the scientific profiles of Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen (1977).

Seafloor spreading has been slowing down

Lake El´gygytgyn. Credit: UMass Amherst

Million-year-old Arctic sedimentary record sheds light on climate mystery

Seismogram

A swarm of 85,000 earthquakes at the Antarctic Orca submarine volcano

One of the strombolian explosions that have occurred at Stromboli about every 10 minutes for at least 2000 years. © UNIGE, Luca Caricchi

The oxidation of volcanoes—a magma opus

An imagined scene from the end of the Cretaceous Period, more than 66 million years ago, has the newly identified softshell turtle Hutchemys walkerorum dwelling alongside iconic species from the Age of the Dinosaurs. (Image: Sergey Krasovskiy)

Newly identified softshell turtle lived alongside T. rex and Triceratops

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