Was plate tectonics occurring when life first formed on Earth? Zircon crystals and magmas reveal new information about plate tectonic activity on Earth billions of years ago.

The movement of the plates creates three types of tectonic boundaries: convergent, where plates move into one another; ...

Map of Earth's principal tectonic plates. Earth's lithosphere. Major and minor plates. arrows indicate direction of movement at plate boundaries. Vector illustration. Billions of years ago, Earth ...

With tectonic plates bumping and grinding against each other, Earth is a pretty active planet. But when did this activity begin? A new study from Yale University claims to have found evidence that ...

The plate tectonics theory established in the 20th century has been successful in interpreting many geological phenomena, processes, and events that have occurred in the Phanerozoic.

If plate tectonics had existed during the 600 million years covered in this study, then you’d expect the zircon crystals to have formed at a variety of latitudes as the plates move around.

Nepal 2015 earthquake was a wake up call for a country that is situated on a dangerous geological faultline, where the Indian tectonic plate collides with the Eurasian plate to form the Himalayas ...

Seismic activity on the Red Planet – called Marsquakes instead of earthquakes – has allowed scientists to study Mars' “lumpy” ...

Early on, ancient crustal plates may have dived deep into the Earth, time and again, giving a halting start to the planetary remodeling process.

“The emergence of plate tectonics is arguably Earth’s defining moment,” they write. “How our planet, alone amongst known terrestrial bodies, evolved the unique plate-tectonic form of ...

The research provides chemical evidence that plate tectonics was most likely occurring more than 4.2 billion years ago when life is thought to have first formed on our planet.

But what was plate tectonic activity like during early Earth? And was the process even occurring during the time when life is thought to have formed?