Geophysicists can use a new model to explain the behavior of a tectonic plate sinking into a subduction zone in the Earth's mantle: the plate becomes weak and thus more deformable when mineral grains ...

The Isabella anomaly -- the seismic signal of a large mass of cool, dehydrated material about 100 kilometers beneath central California -- is in fact a surviving slab of the Farallon oceanic plate, ...

Tectonic plates bend as they sink into the mantle at so-called subduction zones, becoming segmented 'like a slinky snake', a study has concluded. For the largest part, the motion of Earth's plates is ...