"It's wild to think that in some ways tectonic plates have a 'memory' and that affects the way the plates drive mantle convection and mix material back into the Earth," said Dr. Nick Harmon ...

revealing that ancient basalt-rich rock in oceanic plates affects how they sink into Earth’s mantle, reshaping our understanding of plate tectonics. Recent discoveries offer deeper insight into the ...

This discovery sheds new light on how oceanic plates sink into the Earth's mantle. Variations in rock composition within oceanic plates influence their trajectory and subduction speed. These ...

The 205-mile-deep hidden mantle zone under the Caribbean could reshape our understanding of Earth's interior.

Researchers have discovered that the underside of the North American continent is dripping away in blobs of rock—and that the remnants of a tectonic plate sinking in Earth's mantle may be the ...

In the past, such anomalies were usually linked to subduction zones—places where one tectonic plate slides beneath another. In those zones, slabs of oceanic crust plunge into the mantle ...

New research reveals a surprising link between the ancient tectonic history of oceanic plates and their fate as they subduct into Earth’s mantle. Compositional anomalies, formed millions of years ago, ...

Their research revealed compelling evidence of a phenomenon known as delamination—a process in which the denser lower part of the tectonic plate sinks into the Earth’s mantle, while the ...