Surprisingly, geologists don't have a good answer for when plate tectonics emerged, and estimates range from 700 million years ago to before 4 billion years ago, when Earth was still in its infancy.

Plate tectonics — the gradual drift of continents across the Earth's surface that causes earthquakes — began around 2.5 billion years ago, a new study suggests.

A depiction of Earth's tectonic plates. While we know where the plates are now and into the distant past, we don't know when the process first began. (Image credit: Yarr65 via Shutterstock) ...

Plate tectonics reveals how Earth’s surface is constantly in motion, and how its features — volcanoes, earthquakes, ocean basins and mountains — are intrinsically linked to its hot interior.

The Pacific Ring of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped belt of volcanoes known for explosive eruptions and intense earthquakes.

These convergent boundaries also occur where a plate of ocean dives, in a process called subduction, under a landmass. As the overlying plate lifts up, it also forms mountain ranges.

Computer simulations suggest that a collision with another planetary object early in Earth’s history may have provided the heat to set off plate tectonics. By Lucas Joel Some 4.5 billion years ...

Rocks in Western Australia show signs of tectonic deformation Plate tectonics – the drifting of continents – may have got under way at least 3.2 billion years ago and could have played a part ...

Our planet has an outer layer made up of several plates, which move relative to one another. While we may take this knowledge for granted, this theory of plate tectonics was only formulated in the ...

Quirks and Quarks Hawaiian volcano eruption is explosive evidence of plate tectonic theory Bob McDonald's blog: Volcanic eruptions are gradually shifting southeast ...

If plate tectonics, oceans and continents are rare on worlds throughout the universe, that is. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it ...