Image: Tiny crystals called zircons are used to date oceanic crust. A newly developed method that detects tiny bits of zircon in rock reliably predicts the age of ocean crust more than 99 percent of ...

A record-breaking 1268-meter drill core into Earth’s mantle, collected from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the North Atlantic, has provided a deep and detailed mineralogical glimpse of the oceanic mantle.

The formation and composition of oceanic crust remain central yet unresolved questions in plate tectonics. While seismic data suggest a globally uniform crustal thickness (~6 km), petrological ...

Teeming with heat-loving microbes, samples of fluid drawn from the crustal rocks that make up most of the Earth’s seafloor are providing the best evidence yet to support the controversial assertion ...