Deep trenches appear at these boundaries, caused by the oceanic plate bending downward into the Earth. Deep below the Earth's surface, subduction causes partial melting of both the ocean crust and ...

At a destructive boundary the plates are moving towards each other. This usually involves a continental plate and an oceanic plate. The oceanic plate is denser than the continental plate.

Plate tectonics is the theory that Earth's outer layer is made up of plates, which have moved throughout Earth's history. The theory explains the how and why behind mountains, volcanoes ...

They are called passive because they are not near a plate boundary, and there is very little geologic ... beaches and the deposition in the shallow water of the continental shelf. Because the passive ...

Erkan Gün (photo by Don Campbell) “We knew that geological deformations like faults happen on the continental plate interiors far from plate boundaries,” says Erkan Gün, a post-doctoral researcher in ...

Plate tectonics is relatively new, put forth in the last 30 years or so — its forerunner was the now-discarded continental drift theory. The theory states that Earth's outer shell is made up of ...