The story of changing oceans is usually told through temperature shifts and melting ice, but a new study published in "Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems" points to tectonic movement along the ocean floor. Professor Colleen Dalton and her team built on an earlier 2022 study that established a clear pattern of slowing global plate growth starting around 15 million years ago, which continued until about 6 million years ago. This resulted in deeper seas, and Dalton's team found that the basin deepening alone dropped sea level by 26 to 32 meters (roughly 85 to 105 feet).

In a 2025 paper in the "Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets", Assistant Professor Sam Birch and his team identified just two probable deltas among the large mapped rivers that terminate at Titan’s coastlines. That works out to roughly 1.3 per cent. Rivers of comparable size on Earth nearly always form one. The team built a numerical model to test the radar behavior of terrestrial water with the properties expected for Titan’s methane-rich liquids.