Mantle enrichment processes were thought to be limited to parts of oceanic plates influenced by plumes and to continental interiors. Analyses of mantle fragments of the Pacific Plate suggest that such ...

The discovery by Indian and British scientists that the Earth's strong outer shell -- the 'lithosphere' -- within the central Indian Ocean began to deform and fracture 15.4--13.9 million years ago, ...

It is common knowledge that the Earth's rigid upper layer called lithosphere is composed of moving plates. But just what mechanism first set plate tectonics into motion still remains a mystery.

Table 1 Shortening data, T e estimates, age of collision and age of foreland lithosphere. Full size table The distribution of shortening estimated for mountain ranges that have reached a steady-state ...

Boulder, Colo., USA: Too deep to see or reach via drilling, the Moho (crust-mantle transition) remains something of a mystery more than a hundred years after its discovery. This insightful, ...

Professor ZHANG Haijiang from the School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), in collaboration with academician HOU Zengqian from the Institute of Geology ...

About 56 million years ago, Europe and North America began pulling apart to form what became the ever-expanding North Atlantic Ocean. Vast amounts of molten rock from Earth's mantle reached the ocean ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. A mysterious layer lies beneath Earth's massive tectonic plates. Sandwiched between two rock ...

Beneath the American Midwest, on the continent of North America, the underside of Earth's crust is dripping into the planetary interior. There, blobs of molten rock are coalescing in the upper mantle ...

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