By tracking swarms of very small earthquakes, seismologists are getting a new picture of the complex region where the San Andreas fault meets the Cascadia subduction zone, an area that could give rise ...

A hidden shard of ancient crust has been detected where California’s San Andreas system collides with the Cascadia subduction ...

A hidden chunk of an ancient tectonic plate is stuck to the Pacific Ocean floor and sliding under North America, complicating ...

Invisible earthquakes are revealing a hidden tectonic puzzle beneath California’s most dangerous fault zone.

For millions of years, Earth’s moving plates have sculpted continents, carved oceans, and built massive mountain ranges. Yet some of these giant structures vanished deep into the mantle, hidden from ...

New data shows the Kerguelen hotspot, once thought stationary, shifted hundreds of km—overturning a key plate tectonics assumption. This aligns with newer theories that hotspots aren’t truly fixed, ...

Venus, a scorching wasteland of a planet according to scientists, may have once had tectonic plate movements similar to those believed to have occurred on early Earth, a new study found. PROVIDENCE, R ...

Scientists analyzing seismic data from southern Tibet discovered that the Indian tectonic plate is fragmenting as it subducts beneath the Eurasian plate, reshaping our understanding of the forces ...

Memorizing seven continents feels settled, like learning the alphabet. A new study argues the ground rules are less tidy.