A 36-million-year cycle of marine biodiversity booms and busts matches the movements of plate tectonics, linking what happens deep below the ocean to what’s happening in it.
lithosphere
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Uncovering Mantle Heterogeneities Beneath Drifting Continents
Computational models of the composition and volumes of magmas during continental rifting evolution provide clues on the heterogeneities of the deep melting mantle.
Posted inNews
The Mysterious Case of Ireland’s Missing Earthquakes
The Emerald Isle has far fewer earthquakes than neighboring Britain. Now scientists think they know why.
Posted inNews
Mounds of Ancient Ocean Floor May Be Hiding Deep in Earth
A mysterious seismic feature at the bottom of Earth’s mantle is more widespread than previously thought.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
4D Viscosity Constraints from Greenland
The mantle’s resistance to flow appears different for glacial and plate tectonic timescales but this behavior can be reconciled with new thermo-mechanical models of the asthenosphere.
Posted inEditors' Vox
The Seven-Ages of Earth as Seen Through the Continental Lens
The 4.5-billion-year record contained in Earth’s continental crust reveals a seven-phase evolution, from an initial magma ocean to the present-day environment in which we live.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Small-Scale Convection Shuffles the Oceanic Lithosphere
Seafloor spreading organized lithospheric minerals into a lattice, but small-scale convection jumbled up the innermost layer.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Why is the North China Craton Vulnerable to Destruction?
A new study suggests that carbonatite metasomatism, not silicate metasomatism as previously thought, was dominant prior to the removal of the North China Craton in the early Cretaceous.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Frequency Dependent Plates
Rocks stretch, break, and flow, depending on how and under which conditions they are loaded. A new formulation to better capture Earth’s rheology is explored in the context of plate thickness.