Earth’s crust looks solid from the surface, but it is broken into a shifting mosaic of slabs that slowly rearrange oceans and continents. Understanding how those tectonic plates first formed is one of ...

The formation of new ocean crust at mid-ocean ridges (MORs), its subsequent ageing over millions of years as it traverses the ocean basins and eventual subduction into the mantle is an integral ...

The Ontong Java Plateau in the western Pacific Ocean is the largest oceanic plateau on Earth, and its formation mechanism has not been well understood.

Oceanic detachments are deep-rooted, long-lived, plate-scale structures and serve as fluid conduits introducing water into the oceanic lithosphere, impacting plate rheology and potentially inducing ...

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 ...