Scientists have calculated the Earth to be 4.54 billion years old, with an uncertainty of 50 million years on either side.

Even from space, you wouldn’t detect something important about Earth’s shape: It’s not perfectly round. It’s actually a ...

Emerging evidence suggests that plate tectonics, or the recycling of Earth's crust, may have begun much earlier than previously thought — and may be a big reason that our planet harbors life.

If Earth's history were a calendar year, humans would not appear until the last few minutes before midnight on Dec. 31.

Earth's crust, or the outermost shell of the planet, has drastically changed throughout geologic history, mostly due to the ...

Cemeteries not only provide a peaceful place to contemplate and commemorate the dead. They are also great places for studying ...

From time to time, when Earth's tectonic plates shift, the planet emits a long, slow belch of carbon dioxide. In a new ...

Geologic mapping has been one of the most fundamental mandates of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) since its establishment ...

The rarity of precious gemstones comes down to the geologic process of their formation ... For diamonds, those conditions start deep within the mantle, Earth's middle layer.

One of the best known examples of that latter phenomenon is the Cambrian Explosion—the geologic period some 530 million years ...

Isotope methods determine the age of the Earth, help reconstruct the climate of the past ... An understanding of the basic principles of isotope geology is important in a wide range of the sciences: ...