Geology

Evidence for life in 3.7-billion-year-old rocks appears to be crumbling away.

A series of fossil finds suggests that life on Earth started earlier than anyone thought, calling into question a widely held theory of the solar system’s beginnings.

Jason Morgan developed the theory of plate tectonics in 1967 while working among a critical mass of talented geophysicists at Princeton University.

Geochemical signals from deep inside Earth are beginning to shed light on the planet’s first 50 million years, a formative period long viewed as inaccessible to science.

By blasting a stack of minerals with a four-meter-long gun, scientists have found a new clue about the backstory of a very strange rock.

Did the minerals on our planet arise in a predictable fashion, or did they result from chance events? The answers could eventually help scientists identify planets likely to harbor life.

When scientists traced a museum rock back to its origins, they uncovered mysteries about the early solar system.

Evidence from Southwestern deserts suggests that oxygen-breathing organisms arose on land rather than in the seas.