While there’s often much to-do about tectonic plates, especially when their various subductions and transform sliding creates widespread devastation, cratons rarely nab the limelight. That’s not ...

This graphic shows the thickness (in kilometers) of the North American lithosphere. The blue area is about 250 km thick and, based on new findings reported in Nature, is composed of a 3-billion-year ...

Stephen has degrees in science (Physics major) and arts (English Literature and the History and Philosophy of Science), as well as a Graduate Diploma in Science Communication. Stephen has degrees in ...

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." In Geology 101, you learn that mountain ranges form near subduction zones. Take, for example, the famous ...

There’s interesting stuff down there, the North American craton: the continental nucleus, made up of precambrian rock—”precambrian” being the period which covers the first four billion of the Earth’s ...

The continent of North America is not a single, thick, rigid slab, but is instead more similar to a layer cake, with a section of 3-billion-year-old rock sitting atop much newer material, a new study ...

The oldest crust on Earth, known to be unchanging, is actually being altered in real time. The North American continent is "dripping" rock into the lower layers of the Earth, new research says, and in ...