A section of the upper mantle and crust under the Sierra Nevada mountains is peeling away, in a process that may mimic how ...

The ancient crust of Australia is crucial for understanding the early Earth, because it tells us about how the continental crust formed and evolved. Continental crust forms the foundation of ...

Rivers began pumping weathered material into the sea about a billion years after Earth formed, suggesting continents may have gotten an early start.

For geologists, a continent is a large area of thick continental crust composed of granite or similar igneous rocks, forming the continental base, in combination with metamorphic rocks ...

Scientists discovered a hidden process where Earth's crust peels away and sinks, reshaping continents over millions of years, revealing Earth's slow evolution.

The processes that form continental crust from the denser basaltic rocks of the upper mantle may make the lower lithosphere denser than the underlying mantle. One theory holds that the lower ...

New crust is continually being pushed away from divergent boundaries (where sea-floor spreading occurs), increasing Earth's surface. But the Earth isn't getting any bigger. What happens ...

At 4,000 miles long and 30–40 miles wide, the East African Rift (EAR) system is one of the geologic wonders of the world.

These movements have altered the positions and topography of the continents, contributing to the current state of the planet’s crust. While certain regions of the continental crust, known as ...

This phenomenon, occurring over millions of years, helps explain continental formation through the process of differentiation, where denser crust layers are absorbed into the mantle, leaving ...