Mass extinction events throughout Earth’s history are characterized as significant disruptions to life on the planet. There have been five major extinction events that have fundamentally changed how ...

It is accepted that if there were no seismic low velocity zone (LVZ) beneath ocean basins, there would be no seafloor spreading and plate tectonics, but the origin of the LVZ has been under debate for ...

The opening and closing of the Rocas Verdes Basin, a back-arc basin in Patagonia, as described by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin in a study published in Geology. Panels B and C ...

Still, sea-level variation—also known as eustasy—can stem from very different causes. One of the most important is the volume of ocean basins themselves. Because the surface area of continents has ...

Contributed by Kea Giles, Managing Editor, GeologyBoulder, Colo., USA: Mass extinctions are extremely catastrophic events on Earth. Throughout Earth's ...

The Gulf of Mexico holds huge untapped offshore oil deposits that could help power the U.S. for decades. According to researchers, the basin's vast oil and gas reserves are the result of a remarkable ...

Researchers describe zircons from the Andes mountains of Patagonia. Although the zircons formed when tectonic plates were colliding, they have a chemical signature associated with when the plates were ...