But some of these colossal structures have vanished into the depths of the planet’s mantle, seemingly lost to time. Now, scientists have uncovered one of these missing pieces—the Pontus plate ...

While some plates have persisted for hundreds of millions of years, others have vanished, sinking into the mantle in a ...

The plates make up Earth's outer shell, called the lithosphere. (This includes the crust and uppermost part of the mantle.) Churning currents in the molten rocks below propel them along like a ...

The Earth is made of different layers: the core, mantle and crust. Plate tectonic theory shows that the crust of the Earth is split into plates (pieces of the Earth’s crust). The movement of ...