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Tilted sedimentary strata in the Tian Shan, driven by the ongoing indentation of India into Asia Credit: Stijn Glorie

Ancient lost ocean may have built Central Asia’s dinosaur-era mountains

The modern Seattle fault zone cuts directly through the densely populated Puget lowlands, including Seattle and its metro area. Fifty million years ago, the continent tore in two here, setting the geologic stage for the modern faults, according to a new Tectonics study. Credit: Washington Geological Survey.

Understanding the Hazard Potential of the Seattle Fault Zone: It’s “Pretty...

Effects of melting pressure, source oxidation, hydration, and enrichment on magmatic fO2 and H2O. Credit: Science Advances (2026). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aec1040. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aec1040

Earth’s first continents may trace back to subduction 3.5 billion years...

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

Continental plates around Greenland.

Earth’s crust was already on the move 3.5 billion years ago...

Grand Canyon, Arizona

A hidden force beneath the Atlantic ripped open a 500 kilometer...

Different Types of Faults

What Are the Different Types of Faults in Geology?

Types of Intrusive Igneous Bodies

Intrusive Igneous Bodies: Types, Characteristics & Geological Processes

After five decades of dormancy, the Cumbre Vieja volcano on La Palma in the Canary Islands began erupting on Sept. 19, 2021. This image is from October 2021. Credit: Credit: Esteban Gazel/Provided

Earth is slowly peeling its continents from below, fueling ocean volcanoes

Schematic representation of tectonic and climatic influences on organic carbon burial. Credit: Nature Communications (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-63896-z

How tectonics and astronomical cycles shaped the Late Paleozoic climate

Anders Carlson, a UW–Madison geologist, surveys an outlet glacier in southwest Greenland. Carlson and colleagues from UW–Madison and Oregon State University have shown that melting ice from Greenland may have raised ocean levels less than expected during the most-recent prolonged warm spell on Earth. The surprising patterns of ice melt found by new research suggest that Greenland’s ice sheet may be more stable — and Antarctica’s less stable — than previously thought. Credit: Photo courtesy Robert Hatfield, Oregon State University

332 colossal canyons just revealed beneath Antarctica’s ice

Advanced satellite and lidar mapping has uncovered signs that the Tintina fault in Canada's Yukon may be primed for a powerful earthquake. (Image credit: Pierre Longnus via Getty Images)

Scientists just found a massive earthquake threat hiding beneath Yukon

The East African Rift System

A giant pulse beneath Africa could split the continent — and...

A graphic showing the convective heat cycle (red arrows) that drives plate tectonic motion (black arrows) on Earth. Heat flows toward subduction zones through the uppermost mantle layer, the asthenosphere. A computer model from Rice University finds that the asthenosphere can locally drag plates along with it rather than acting exclusively as a brake on plate movements as had been widely believed. (Image courtesy of Surachit/Wikimedia Commons)

Crustal brines at an oceanic transform fault

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

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

Schematic representation of the process of subduction of tectonic plates and of a mantle plume rising from an LLSVP. In the latter, the mineral grains are larger than those in the subducted plates.

Earth’s mantle reveals hidden treasures

The Zagros Mountains and sediments that have accumulated over millions of years along the depression at the base of the mountains. Photo: Renas Koshnaw

Oceanic plate between Arabian and Eurasian continental plates is breaking away

The Velodrome Recumbent Fold

The Velodrome Recumbent Fold

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