Latest Crust Stories

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science CorrespondentWASHINGTON -- Tiny zircon crystals dug up from ancient Australian deposits appear to have been formed right after the birth of the planet -- a finding that suggests that early on, Earth had a cool crust much like today's that could have harbored life, scientists said on Thursday.Most remnants of the very early crust, formed more than 4 billion years ago, are gone -- recycled as part of the steady ongoing process known as plate tectonics. But the...

A surprising new study by an international team of researchers has concluded Earth's continents most likely were in place soon after the planet was formed, overturning a long-held theory that the early planet was either moon-like or dominated by oceans. The team came to the conclusion following an analysis of a rare metal element known as hafnium in ancient minerals from the Jack Hills in Western Australia, thought to be among the oldest rocks on Earth. Hafnium is found in association with...

NASA -- NASA scientists have discovered additional evidence that Mars once underwent plate tectonics, slow movement of the planet's crust, like the present-day Earth. A new map of Mars' magnetic field made by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft reveals a world whose history was shaped by great crustal plates being pulled apart or smashed together. Scientists first found evidence of plate tectonics on Mars in 1999. Those initial observations, also done with the Mars Global Surveyor's...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. "” The East Pacific Rise, a vast volcanic mountain range submerged in the eastern Pacific Ocean, is one of the fastest seafloor factories on the planet. Here, along a rocky spine that runs about 1,000 miles west of South America, oceanic crust is created from magma bubbling up from deep within Earth's interior.Forces that shape these young oceanic plates have come into clearer focus through research conducted by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Brown...

For the first time, scientists have produced images of the oceanic crust and found that the upper and lower layers of the crust are likely formed from different magma pools. The images begin to answer some lingering questions about where new ocean crust comes from and whether it is all formed the same way.Geophysicists Robert Detrick and Juan-Pablo Canales of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and colleagues used reflected seismic, or sound, waves to successfully image the structure...

Researchers at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory recently resolved a long-standing contradiction about the workings of the deep Earth. For years, many geochemists have argued that parts of the deep mantle remain unchanged since the formation of the Earth, whereas many geophysicists and geodynamicists have held that the entire mantle has been convecting (moving and mixing) over geological time. Based on a synthesis of data on global oceanic magmatism, Cornelia Class and...

Some of the highest quality images ever taken of the Earth's lower crust reveal that the upper and lower crust form in two distinctly different ways. A team led by researchers from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory will publish the results of their work in the August 25 issue of the journal Nature. The Earth's oceanic crust is formed from magma bodies located beneath mid-ocean ridges. Although axial magma chambers, magma bodies located in the mid-crust, are known to be...

(Kingston, ON) "“ Geologists at Queen's University have discovered that the time it takes for mountain ranges to form is millions of years shorter than previously thought.This controversial finding could have implications for our understanding of other geological processes that shaped the Earth, says Professor James Lee and postdoctoral fellow Alfredo Camacho of Queen's Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering Department. The study will appear in the June 30 edition of the...

Could Earth have had an even more violent infancy than previously imagined? New isotope data suggest that the Earth not only had a very violent beginning but also point to new information about our planet's chemical evolution. New and precise measurements of a neodymium isotope ratio (142Nd/144Nd) led Maud Boyet and Rick Carlson of Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism to the discovery that all terrestrial rocks have an excess of 142Nd compared to the expected building...

NASA -- Research funded partly by NASA has confirmed the existence of liquid water on the Earth's surface more than 4 billion years ago. Scientists have found that the Earth had formed patterns of crust formation, erosion and sediment recycling as early as 4.35 billion years ago. Their findings came during a study of zircon crystals formed during the earliest period of Earth's history, the Hadean Eon (4.5 billion to 4.0 billion years ago). "NASA is interested in how early the Earth had...