Recent earth science developments suggest that how we count our planet’s largest land masses is less clear than we learned in school. By Matt Kaplan The world is split up into continents, there are ...

Geoscientists have solved an age-old mystery of oceanic volcanism and plate tectonics, explaining why some islands contain so much continental material despite their distance from continental plates.

The first half-billion years of Earth science were gnarly. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. When Earth was just a wee young thing, ...

Classical plate tectonic theory was developed in the 1960s. It proposed that the outer layer of our planet is made up of a small number of rigid plates separated by narrow boundaries. The surface of ...

New research examining over 20 years of data captured by NASA’s twin climate satellites, GRACE and GRACE-FO, has revealed an “unprecedented” level of water loss among the planet’s continents, creating ...

A new study from researchers who have investigated rock sediments from east India believes they have found evidence that suggests Earth's first continents rose out of the ocean far earlier than ...

Gear-obsessed editors choose every product we review. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Why Trust Us? The impressive escarpments that line the coasts of continents speak to a geologic ...

They didn't always look the way they do today, but yes, there have always been continents on Earth. The familiar configuration of the seven official continents spread out over Earth today has ...

The formation of the Earth’s continents occurred during a fiery afterbirth known as the Archean Eon, which stretched from 4 billion to 2.5 billion years ago. It was in this bubbling cauldron of ...

THERE are various continents that stretch between different regions of the Earth. While continents were formed similarly, various elements differentiate these ...

Geologists have long debated when continents first formed. A new model suggests they took shape half a billion years earlier than thought, during our planet’s turbulent childhood — which could mean ...