Geology

In December 2014, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released its highest-resolution geologic map of Mars. The new geologic and structural map uses the highest-resolution, orbiter-based images…

The 2011 east coast earthquake felt by people from Georgia to Canada likely originated from a fault “junction” just outside of Mineral, Virginia, according to new U.S. Geological Survey research…

When the Bárðarbunga volcano beneath Iceland's Vatnajökull ice cap reawakened in August 2014, scientists got an opportunity to monitor how the magma flowed through cracks in the rock away from the…

Many villagers near the Cape Verde volcano will have little to return to. Joao Relvas/EPA By David Rothery, The Open University Around 60 volcanoes erupt in the average year. On any particular day,…

The planet's largest carbon reservoir is not in permafrost or the Amazon rainforest, it is hidden in the Earth's inner core, according to what the authors of a new study in PNAS call a "…

An ancient, deep canyon buried along the Yarlung Tsangpo River in south Tibet, north of the eastern end of the Himalayas, has been discovered by geologists who say this ancient canyon--thousands of…

Time is relative. What is a long time to humans is nothing to a mountain. Like humans, mountains usually burst on the scene, then they stand tall and finally age wears them down and their sharp …

Tectonic plates, which make up the outer layer of the earth, are rigid. It is giant layers of rock, after all. But that is a bit of a simplification. They are not rigid and don't fit together as…

The "Cambrian explosion," the rapid diversification of animal life in the fossil record 530 million years ago, has by necessity remained the subjective of speculation. We know it happened, but no…

By Simon Redfern, University of Cambridge How is it that Earth developed an atmosphere that made the development of life possible? A study published in the journal Nature Geoscience links the origins…