Geologists have made certain assumptions about how the crust making up ... siderophile elements in the model – elements attracted to iron, such as the iron in Earth's core as it took shape.

The new model demonstrated that Earth’s early crust fractured, with portions thickening into the precursors of continents while the molten magma between these fragments generated crust ...

Lithospheric dripping occurs when the underside of Earth's rocky crust is heated to a certain temperature. As the rock melts, a drop starts to form, eventually becoming weighty enough to break off and ...

Water from both volcanic rocks and deep mantle melted Earth's crust 1.6 billion years ago. This long-lasting melting formed ...

By Adam Nossiter Xavier Le Pichon, a French geophysicist whose pioneering model of the earth’s tectonic plates helped revolutionize how scientists understand movements of the earth’s crust ...

Seismic mapping of North America has revealed that an ancient slab of crust buried beneath the Midwest is causing the crust above it to "drip" and suck down rocks from across the continent.

In a new paper published in Nature today, colleagues and I reveal secrets of Earth’s crust 4.5 billion years ago. In the process, we also provide a new way to approach one of the biggest enduring ...

before pulling it down into the Earth's mantle. This phenomenon is gradually stripping away material from the bottom of the continent's crust. Using a high-resolution seismic technique called full ...