The dance of the continents has been reshaping Earth for billions of years, creating the landscapes we walk on today.

The tiny Juan de Fuca plate is largely responsible for the volcanoes that dot the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The plates make up Earth's outer shell, called the lithosphere. (This includes ...

Plate boundaries are where the action is. A large fraction of all earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and mountain building occurs at plate boundaries. It is also where most of the people on Earth live.

Plate tectonics is the theory used to explain the structure of the Earth’s crust and many of the associated phenomenon. The rigid lithosphere is split into 15 major plates that slowly move on top of ...

Along submarine mountain ranges, the mid-ocean ridges, forces from the Earth's interior push tectonic plates apart, forming new ocean floor and thus moving continents about. However, many features of ...

New Yale-led research suggests how and when Earth came to develop one of its most distinct features — rigid tectonic plates — and why Venus, Earth’s twin-like neighbor, never has. “We think it all ...

(CBS News) A new study suggests that two recent earthquakes may indicate a literal seismic shift in our understanding of tectonic plate movements. Massive earthquakes under the Indian Ocean that took ...

If you think about mountain ranges like the Andes or the Himalayas, you can come up with multiple factors that must affect their size and shape. There’s the collision of tectonic plates that squeezes ...

The diagram below shows the structure of the earth. In geography, taking a slice through a structure to see inside is called a cross section. Continental plates are usually quite thick (between 35 to ...