The two halves of the African continent are moving apart at a rate of a few millimeters each year, geologists have calculated ...

The Earth's crust is composed of approximately 15 to 20 tectonic plates, which float on molten magma beneath the Earth.

A research team led by Zeresenay Alemseged, a researcher at the University of Chicago in the United States, discovered 2.6 ...

In a paper published in Nature, a team led by University of Chicago paleoanthropologist Professor Zeresenay Alemseged reports ...

The newly described specimen is a partial left mandible plus a molar crown, dated to about 2.6 million years ago using multiple methods, making it one of the oldest Paranthropus fossils known. The ...

Learn how a 2.6-million-year-old Paranthropus jaw from Ethiopia’s Afar region is reshaping scientists’ understanding of early ...

The vertical movement of the mantle is one of the driving forces that brings about large-scale geological changes to the surface of our planet. These mantle upwellings, sometimes referred to as mantle ...

Scientists say Africa is gradually breaking apart along the East African Rift. The process is slow, but it could one day ...

Active lava flows spilling out of the Erta Ale volcano in Afar, Ethiopia. The Afar Rift zone is one of the few examples on Earth where three tectonic rifts converge. Experts previously theorized this ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Bressan is a geologist who covers curiosities about Earth. Magnetic data collected in the late 1960s reveals how the ...

Beneath the Afar region in Ethiopia, scientists have discovered pulsing waves of molten rock rising from deep within the Earth — a geological heartbeat that could eventually split Africa in two. These ...