Plate Tectonics

A new method of assessing tsunami risk in New Zealand finds that giant waves could hit the country's shores once every 500 years.

Scientists have pieced together the remnants of a continent that broke off from western Australia 155 million years ago and seemingly vanished as it drifted northward toward Southeast Asia.

Scientists have fully mapped the lost continent of Zealandia in a world first, discovering new details about how it broke away from the supercontinent Gondwana through the ignition of a huge volcanic region tens of millions of years ago.

This excerpt from Michael Mann's latest book looks at the Cambrian explosion, the Great Dying and how dinosaurs were able to take over thanks to changes to the climate 250 million years ago.

The world's highest mountain system may have reached 60% of its current elevation before the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates crashed into each other, giving the peaks an extra push.

Researchers analyzing ancient deposits in Australia found evidence that Earth's layers started to get mixed up — a fingerprint of plate tectonics — about 1.3 billion years after the planet formed.

Strange, never-before-seen movements in the East Africa Rift Valley appear to be driven by super-heated rock from deep beneath Earth's surface.

Will the East African Rift split the continent and create a new ocean, or will it fizzle out?

A new model shows how the planet's surface evolved over the past 100 million years, from the shifting of tectonic plates to the movement of sediments.