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 ...

Researchers created a seismic map of Earth's interior beneath the southeastern Pacific Ocean and discovered an ancient slab of oceanic crust that appears to be stuck midway through the mantle. When ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Like a mosquito tunneling into the skin to get at the rich feast within, geologists poked a long, narrow drill into Earth's crust ...

The discovery, made just off the coast of Vancouver Island in the Pacific Ocean, shows that a section of the oceanic crust is slowly breaking apart beneath the North American Plate. Using seismic data ...

The formation and composition of oceanic crust remain central yet unresolved questions in plate tectonics. While seismic data suggest a globally uniform crustal thickness (~6 km), petrological ...

Earth's crust ranges from 5 to 70 kilometers in thickness and serves as the planet's outermost layer. This thin shell represents less than one percent of Earth's total mass, yet it's the only layer we ...