Possible geodynamic regimes that may have prevailed in the Archean are investigated by back-tracking the thermal history of Earth from the present-day conditions. If the temporal evolution of plate-tectonic convection is modulated by strong depleted lithosphere created at mid-ocean ridges, more sluggish plate tectonics is predicted when the mantle was hotter, contrary to commonly believed, more...

Successful scientific theories provide theoretical understanding for reliable deterministic or probabilistic forecasting of events. In the past decades the volume of data obtained within the fields of structural geology and tectonics has increased enormously, but the theoretical understanding of the processes that generate these data has not advanced at the same rate. For example, after decades...

In the 1960s, geology was transformed by the paradigm of plate tectonics. The 1965 paper of Bullard, Everett and Smith was a linking transition between the theories of continental drift and plate tectonics. They showed, conclusively, that the continents around the Atlantic were once contiguous and that the Atlantic Ocean had grown at rates of a few centimetres per year since the Early Jurassic,...

We review recent developments in the study of volcanism and tectonics on Venus. Venus’s crust is basaltic, dry, and probably about 30 km thick. The mantle convects, giving rise to plumes, and has a similar composition and mean temperature (∼1300◦C), but a higher viscosity (∼1020 Pa s), than that of the Earth. Inferred melt generation rates constrain the lithospheric thickness to between 80 and ...

A frotheria is one of the most remarkable hypotheses in mammal evolution. It suggests that one-third of the orders of placental mammals form an ancient group that evolved on Africa when that continent was isolated from others through plate tectonics (1). Although this hypothesis has been predicted by molecular clock studies (2), evidence for it has emerged only in the last 3 years from phylogen...

The visualization of spatial information for wayfinding assistance requires a substantial amount of display area. Depending on the particular route, even large screens can be insufficient to visualize all information at once and in a scale such that users can understand the specific course of the route and its spatial context. Personalized wayfinding maps, such as μMaps are a possible solution ...

[1] Fluid distribution in convergent margins is by most accounts closely related to tectonics. This association has been widely studied at accretionary prisms, but at half of the Earth’s convergent margins, tectonic erosion grinds down overriding plates, and here fluid distribution and its relation to tectonics remain speculative. Here we present a new conceptual model for the hydrological syst...