Scientists have discovered that a portion of the North American craton is slowly dripping into Earth's mantle, challenging ...

New research suggests that Earth's first crust, formed over 4.5 billion years ago, already carried the chemical traits we ...

Scientists discovered Earth's first crust had continental chemical signatures. This challenges beliefs about when these ...

Scientists have long thought that tectonic plates needed to dive beneath each other to create the chemical fingerprint we see in continents.

Earth's crust today has a surprisingly similar composition to the planet's first outer shell, or "protocrust," new research ...

Geologists have made certain assumptions about how the crust making up our planet's earliest surface formed, but a new study ...

A study published in Nature on 2 April reveals that Earth's first crust, formed about 4.5 billion years ago, probably had chemical features remarkably like today’s continental crust. This suggests the ...

It’s long been thought that tectonic plates needed to dive beneath each other to create the chemical fingerprint we see in ...

A recent study challenges previous geological assumptions, revealing that Earth's initial protocrust closely resembled the ...

A diagram showing how Earth's crust and upper mantle (together known as the lithosphere) could be dripping into the mantle due to the Farallon slab. | Credit: Hua et al. Nature Geoscience (2025) ...