The dance of the continents has been reshaping Earth for billions of years, creating the landscapes we walk on today.

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. Based on a series of models considering how the continents were ...

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 ...

In deep Earth, rocks take up and release water all the time, and the effects can be wide reaching. Dehydration can cause rocks to crack and trigger earthquakes, and over geologic timescales, this ...

A study suggests that the answers to how and why mountains form are buried deeper than once thought. Clues in the landscape of southern Italy allowed researchers to produce a long-term, continuous ...

In the heart of Asia, deep underground, two huge tectonic plates are crashing into each other — a violent but slow-motion bout of geological bumper cars that over time has sculpted the soaring ...

Massive tectonic collisions in the tropics may have caused Earth's last three great ice ages. Before each of these ice ages, new research finds, collisions between continents and island arcs built ...

Antarctica, a land of frozen mystery, holds secrets hidden beneath its thick ice sheets. One such secret is a colossal mountain range, the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, which has puzzled scientists ...

The opening and closing of the Rocas Verdes Basin, a back-arc basin in Patagonia, as described by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin in a study published in Geology. Panels B and C ...