Image: Tiny crystals called zircons are used to date oceanic crust. A newly developed method that detects tiny bits of zircon in rock reliably predicts the age of ocean crust more than 99 percent of ...

Scientists have shown how the freezing of a ‘slushy’ ocean of magma may be responsible for the composition of the Moon’s crust. The scientists, from the University of Cambridge and the Ecole normale ...

Researchers describe zircons from the Andes mountains of Patagonia. Although the zircons formed when tectonic plates were colliding, they have a chemical signature associated with when the plates were ...

Data from scientific ocean drilling have offered important insights through which we have begun to better understand solid Earth cycles, including the interaction and evolution of Earth’s crust, ...

When the supercontinent Pangea began to fragment around 200 million years ago during the Early Jurassic, it reshaped the face of the planet. Vast new oceans opened, continents drifted apart and the ...

All around the world, from the Red Sea to the deep ocean ridges of the Atlantic, lurk more than a dozen geological misfits. These scraps of continental crust are found in the middle of oceans, ...