Jostling blocks of crust defy conventional wisdom on how the surfaces of rocky planets work
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/venus-may-be-home-new-kind-tectonicsPDF links from the LPI conference at bottom of article.
"Geologists generally thought rocky planets could have only two forms of crust: a stagnant lid as on the moon or Mars — where the whole crust is one continuous piece — or a planet with plate tectonics as on Earth, where the surface is split into giant moving blocks that sink beneath or collide with each other. Venus was thought to have one solid lid (SN: 12/3/11, p. 26).
Instead, those options may be two ends of a spectrum. “Venus may be somewhere in between,” Byrne said. “It’s not plate tectonics, but it ain’t not plate tectonics.”
