Latest North American Plate Stories
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A team of American scientists believe they have solved a geological mystery buried about 100 miles below California. According to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, geologists from Brown University, Columbia University, the University of Rhode Island and the University of Oregon identified the source of anomalous seismic readings as a fragment of the Farallon tectonic plate, which was pushed deep into the...
Researchers at Monash University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography identify movements of plate and plate boundaries; could substantially improve models of tectonic motionA team of researchers including Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego geophysicist Dave Stegman has developed a new theory to explain the global motions of tectonic plates on the earth's surface.The new theory extends the theory of plate tectonics - a kinematic description of plate motion without reference...
A new analysis of jade found along the Motagua fault that bisects Guatemala is underscoring the fact that this region has a more complex geologic history than previously thought. Because jade and other associated metamorphic rocks are found on both sides of the fault, and because the jade to the north is younger by about 60 million years, a team of geologists posits in a new research paper that the North American and Caribbean plates have done more than simply slide past each other: they have...
A peculiar swarm of earthquakes have been occurring off of Oregon's central coast, resembling those that happen just prior to a volcanic eruption. However, scientists are baffled as there are no volcanoes in the area. Â There have been more than 600 quakes during the past 10 days in an area 150 miles southwest of Newport. The largest quake was a magnitude of 5.4, with two others measuring greater than magnitude 5.0, OSU reported.Few of the quakes have been strong enough to be felt on land,...
Uncovering a rare, two-billion-year-old window into the Earth's mantle, a University of Houston professor and his team have found our planet's geological history is more complex than previously thought. Jonathan Snow, assistant professor of geosciences at UH, led a team of researchers in a North Pole expedition, resulting in a discovery that could shed new light on the mantle, the vast layer that lies beneath the planet's outer crust. These findings are described in a paper titled "Ancient,...
BOSTON -- The Gakkel Ridge, encased under the frozen Arctic Ocean, is steep and rocky, and scientists suspect its remote location hosts an array of undiscovered life.Researchers hope newly developed robots will give them their first look at the mysterious ridge located between Greenland and Siberia.Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod plan to begin a 40-day expedition of the ridge on July 1. They plan to use the robots to navigate and map its terrain and sample...
Latest North American Plate Reference Libraries
The Pacific Ring of Fire, or Ring of Fire for short, is an area where a large number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in the basin of the Pacific Ocean. In a 25,000 mile horseshoe shape, it’s associated with an almost continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic belts, volcanic arcs and/or plate movement. The Ring of Fire contains 452 volcanoes and is home to over 75 percent of the world’s active and dormant volcanoes. It’s sometimes called the circum-Pacific belt or the...
