Off the coast of Vancouver Island, a slab of ocean floor has dropped by about five kilometers along a fault that scientists ...

The present solid Earth is actually active, with new plates generating in the mid-ocean ridges and some old plates sinking back into the interior through subduction zones. Subduction is thus a key ...

A new study, resorting to computational models, predicts that a subduction zone currently below the Gibraltar Strait will propagate further inside the Atlantic and contribute to forming an Atlantic ...

Our planet's lithosphere is broken into several tectonic plates. Their configuration is ever-shifting, as supercontinents are assembled and broken up, and oceans form, grow, and then start to close in ...

Subduction zones mark the boundaries where one lithospheric plate descends beneath another into the mantle, driving a suite of tectonic, thermal and fluid-mediated processes. As oceanic crust is ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. Oct 29, 2025, 03:16pm EDT Nov 01, 2025, 01:11pm EDT For the first ...

Several billion-year-old rocks tell the story of the planet’s transition from alien landscape to one of continents, oceans, and ultimately life A new study from scientists at Scripps Institution of ...

This study is led by Prof. Zhong-Hai Li (University of Chinese Academy of Sciences). The present solid Earth is actually active, with new plates generating in the mid-ocean ridges and some old plates ...

Map highlighting the Atlantic subduction zones, the fully developed Lesser Antilles and Scotia arcs on the western side and the incipient Gibraltar arc on the eastern side. From Duarte et al., 2018.