(Phys.org)—New research sheds light on how and when the modern day continents began to form. Researchers from the University of Bristol analyzed radio isotope abundances in 13,000 samples of ...

Earth’s continental crust may have begun forming hundreds of millions of years earlier than previously thought, Yale scientists say — and the reason will be obvious to anyone who has ever baked a cake ...

Continental crust is the layer of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks that forms the geological continents and the areas of shallow seabed close to their shores, known as continental shelves.

New experiments have re-created the genesis of Earth’s first continents. By putting the squeeze on water and oceanic rocks under intense heat, researchers produced material that closely resembles the ...

The ChemCam laser instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover has turned its beam onto some unusually light-colored rocks on Mars, and the results are surprisingly similar to Earth’s granitic continental ...

When you think about a large asteroid impact, you might imagine a moment of devastation: a violent collision, a blast of heat ...

Scientists have shown that south east Iceland is underlain by continental crust. An international team, including researchers at the University of Liverpool, have shown that south east Iceland is ...

Climate change will have us under water before Earth’s sinking crust will (Image: Alexander Mustard/Solent News/Rex) Add this to the distant-doomsdays file. Earth’s continental crust, which ...

How do you make half the mass of two continents disappear? To answer that question, you first need to discover that it’s missing. That’s what a trio of University of Chicago geoscientists and their ...

Except perhaps for some remote island dwellers, most people have a natural tendency to view continents as fundamental, permanent and even characteristic features of Earth. One easily forgets that the ...