A long-lost slab of Earth’s crust may be pulling away the bottom of the oldest part of North America, scientists say ...

Something strange is happening beneath the heart of North America. The continent’s ancient core, the craton, is changing ...

As you read this, the North American continent’s underside is dribbling away into Earth’s molten mantle. And according to ...

A study published in the journal Nature Geoscience has revealed a subtle yet significant phenomenon beneath the North ...

Even the oldest and most stable of lithospheric structures can’t withstand geologic machinations deep within the Earth.

North America is dripping—with sizable blobs of rock sinking from the underside of the continent, beneath the U.S. Midwest, ...

Lithospheric dripping occurs when the underside of Earth's rocky crust is heated to a certain temperature. As the rock melts, a drop starts to form, eventually becoming weighty enough to break off and ...

The team believe that the sinking remains of the Farallon Plate are both redirecting the flow of material in the mantle such that it is wearing away the bottom of the North American craton ...

an oceanic tectonic plate that has been subducting under North America for about the past 200 million years, could be driving the process despite being separated from the craton by about 600 ...

Scientists had posited that there was something beneath the North American craton causing the drips, and that something ...

However, the interesting part of the North American craton discovery is that the changes ... driving the dripping can influence how tectonic plates evolve over time, but they are very slow going ...