tectonic plates
Coverage of tectonic plates in the Nexus archive.
- China team unearths world’s oldest amber, hidden in ancient Xinjiang coal seam
Chinese scientists discovered the world’s oldest verified amber in Xinjiang’s coal seams, dating back 385 million years. This finding pushes back the record by 65 million years and challenges assumptions about ancient plant resin production before most animal groups existed.
- Japan’s deadliest fault line shifts, frustrating megaquake forecasts
A Japanese study reveals the locked zone in the Nankai Trough, where tectonic plates meet and stress builds, is not permanent but shifts over time. This complicates efforts to predict megaquakes along the fault line, as the 900km-long Nankai Trough involves the Philippine plate slipping under the Eurasian plate.
- Want an oxygen-rich atmosphere? Stuff oxygen’s friends in the mantle.
Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere developed over billions of years through a combination of biological and geological processes. A new study led by Wei Shi links changes in tectonic plate subduction to significant increases in atmospheric oxygen levels.
- Scientists discover hidden forces are warping Earth deep beneath the surface
Scientists have mapped deformation in Earth's deepest mantle, revealing ancient tectonic plates buried thousands of kilometers underground. Using global seismic data, they confirmed theories about these slabs' influence on mantle deformation for the first time on a global scale.