The Ontong Java Plateau, a volcanically-formed underwater plateau located in the Pacific Ocean north of the Solomon Islands, is younger and its eruption was more protracted than previously thought, ...

A fiery mystery has puzzled geologists for decades: where did the lava fueling one of Earth’s largest volcanic events come from? A new study may finally have the answer. Scientists have long believed ...

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from any continent, Easter Island rises out of the sea. Its surface tells a story of volcanism that began roughly 2.5 million years ago, but ...

A mysterious find on Easter Island, investigated by a team of geologists, suggests that the Earth's mantle seems to behave differently than once thought. Geography textbooks describe the Earth's ...

A vast, geometric feature buried beneath the Pacific Ocean is forcing scientists to rethink what they know about Earth’s deep past. Early mapping suggests a colossal, plateau-like structure near ...

The Earth's mantle might not always move along in lockstep with the overlying tectonic crust—as set out in science textbooks for decades—but may instead behave differently. This is the conclusion of ...

A major geological discovery has just linked one of Earth's largest volcanic structures to a submarine hotspot in the Pacific Ocean. This revelation overturns our understanding of how submarine ...

Geography textbooks describe the Earth's mantle beneath its plates as a well-mixed viscous rock that moves along with those plates like a conveyor belt. But that idea, first set out some 100 years ago ...