Latest Crust Stories

A new twist to a 50 million-year-old tale Fifty million years ago, India slammed into Eurasia, a collision that gave rise to the tallest landforms on the planet, the Himalaya Mountains and the Tibetan Plateau. India and Eurasia continue to converge today, though at an ever-slowing pace. University of Michigan geomorphologist and geophysicist Marin Clark wanted to know when this motion will end and why. She conducted a study that led to surprising findings that could add a new wrinkle to...

A mysterious cycle of booms and busts in marine biodiversity over the past 500 million years could be tied to a periodic uplifting of the world's continents, scientists report in the March issue of The Journal of Geology. The researchers discovered periodic increases in the amount of the isotope strontium-87 found in marine fossils. The timing of these increases corresponds to previously discovered low points in marine biodiversity that occur in the fossil record roughly every 60 million...

Unexpected new findings by a University of Maryland team of geochemists show that some portions of the Earth's mantle (the rocky layer between Earth's metallic core and crust) formed when the planet was much smaller than it is now, and that some of this early-formed mantle survived Earth's turbulent formation, including a collision with another planet-sized body that many scientists believe led to the creation of the Moon. "It is believed that Earth grew to its current size by collisions...

The new issue of LITHOSPHERE is online now. Papers present evidence for the on-going re-shaping of the Rocky-Mountain–Colorado Plateau region by young uplift driven from below (mantle buoyancy), research in the Aegean Sea that documents a newly defined extensional fault system, and study of the hydrologic heterogeneity of faulted and fractured sediment layers with implications for similar rocks to affect the flow of moisture downward toward the spent nuclear fuel geologic repository at...

ORRVILLE, Ohio, Oct. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Whether struggling with weepy meringues or caved-in crusts, when it comes to pie making most bakers always appreciate a little expert advice. According to an online Crisco® National Pie Survey, conducted by Wakefield Research during the 2010 holiday season, 59 percent of surveyed Americans said pie is the hardest dessert to prepare from scratch, followed distantly by cake (22%) and brownies (6%). Great pies start with great crusts therefore...

  An international team of scientists has provided new insights into the processes behind the evolution of the planet by demonstrating how salty water and gases transfer from the atmosphere into the Earth's interior. The paper was published in Nature Geoscience on Sept. 25. Scientists have long argued about how the Earth evolved from a primitive state in which it was covered by an ocean of molten rock, into the planet we live on today with a solid crust made of moving tectonic...

  By studying the chemistry of an unorthodox set of Brazilian diamonds, a team of researchers have discovered startling new information about the carbon cycle and the theory of plate tectonics. Researchers from the University of Bristol, Universidade de Brasilia, and the Carnegie Institution for Science studied what are known as "superdeep" diamonds, some of which originated from depths of 435 miles (700km) or more before erupting to the surface as volcanic rocks. Most diamonds...

  Siberian traps and their relation to the mass extinction 250 million years ago The eruption of giant masses of magma in Siberia 250 million years ago led to the Permo-Triassic mass extinction when more than 90 % of all species became extinct. An international team including geodynamic modelers from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences together with geochemists from the J. Fourier University of Grenoble, the Max Plank Institute in Mainz, and Vernadsky-, Schmidt- and...

According to new research, the Earth's moon could be younger than previously thought.The theory for lunar formation says that a rock known as ferroan anorthosite (FAN) is the oldest of the Moon's crustal rocks, but scientists have had difficulty dating FAN samples. Researchers used newly refined techniques to determine the age of a sample of FAN from the lunar rock collection at the NASA Johnson Space Center. They analyzed isotopes of the elements lead and neodymium to place the FAN sample's...

Astronomers say that the Earth may have once had two moons, until the current moon devoured the other. A new study by planetary scientists at the University of California - Santa Cruz said that the far side of the moon, known as the lunar farside highlands, may be the remains of a collision with a similar companion moon. The near side of the moon is low and flat, while the far side is mountainous with a thicker crust.  The new study suggests that Earth's once second moon eventually fell...