As a youngster growing up in New York, Graham Baird always was interested in science and the natural world, and in college he was fascinated with how igneous and metamorphic rocks formed. As an ...

The Rock Cycle is Earth's great recycling process where igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks can all be derived from and form one another. Analogous to recycling a Coke can, where an old can ...

Sedimentary rocks are made up of pieces of older rocks (igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary) and organic remains (shells, bone, etc.). When rocks break apart from erosion they are transported by ...

Researchers have produced a new estimate for the origin of Earth's plate tectonics—the movement of large chunks of the planet's outer layer, or crust. Although there is broad consensus that plate ...

A new study of rocks that formed billions of years ago lends fresh insight into how Earth's plate tectonics, or the movement of large pieces of Earth's outer shell, evolved over the planet's ...

Discover Mount Shuksan's green top, all built from ancient oceanic greenschist. Greenschist is a special type of rock that gets its green tint from minerals compressed long ago deep under the ocean.

While many rocks don’t burn, some of them do. It depends on what the rocks are made of – and that’s related to how they were formed. Rocks that burn when they get heated up are combusting. This means ...

We often talk about climate change, melting glaciers, or strange landforms. But we rarely think about something that’s always around us– rocks. They don’t make the news, but they’re everywhere. We ...

Cratons (from the Greek “power” or “might”) are the areas of the oldest continental crust on Earth that are preserved only in several places on our planet. According to scientists, the Kaapvaal Craton ...

Anjouan island, off eastern coast of Africa, is mostly made of dark volcanic rocks, like these cobbles on the shoreline of one of the island's beaches. But researchers have now found a motherlode of ...

While many rocks don’t burn, some of them do. It depends on what the rocks are made of – and that’s related to how they were formed. Rocks that burn when they get heated up are combusting. This means ...