April 1, 2025 A figure from the study showing rock dripping from the craton. The researchers hypothesize that the dripping is caused by the remnants of the subducting Farallon slab below the craton. Credit: Hua et al., Nature Geoscience. Researchers have discovered that the underside of the North American continent is dripping away in blobs of rock — and that the remnants of a tectonic plate sinking in the Earth’s mantle may be the reason why. A paper published in Nature Geoscience describes the...