Plate tectonics, or the recycling of Earth’s crust, may have begun much earlier than previously thought—and may be a big ...

"Why is Earth the only rocky planet to have plate tectonics?" said Qian Yuan, lead author of that paper and a postdoctoral fellow in geodynamics at the California Institute of Technology.

where the oceanic rock descends into the Earth's interior. The downward pull is a key driver The coherent narrative of plate tectonics was about to fall rapidly into place. McKenzie's paper was ...