Super deep rock formation and upper mantle move in concertMarch 06, 2002European Highlight from Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) In a finding that contradicts conventional wisdom, results from a new technique to survey the super-deep upper mantle of southern Africa show that underground volcanic rock shifted with the lithospheric plates in the area. Previously, researchers thought that the motion of the two objects was independent. Vinnik and Farra ["Subcratonic low-velocity layer and flood basalts"] analyzed seismic recordings down to 360 kilometers [220 miles] and were able to create images of two areas exposed to similar basalt emplacement more than 200 million years ago. They then compared the known motions of the upper mantle's plates to the location of the two rock formations and found that the formation seemed to have migrated along with the plates. The novel technique used shear waves converted to compression mode to examine the low-velocity layer of the craton, waves that are often distorted or too weak for accurate signal detection. The observation indicates that the mantle in these regions is quite viscous relative to the convecting upper mantle. Authors: Lev Vinnik, Institute of Physics of the Earth, Moscow, Russia; Veronique Farra, Institut de Pysique du Globe de Paris, Paris, France. American Geophysical Union (AGU) |
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