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Prospecting for Jurassic slabs

Nature volume 397, pages 203–204 (1999)Cite this article

Increasingly precise seismic imaging of the Earth's deep interior continues to sharpen our understanding of mantle convection and plate tectonics. One such study has traced events down to 2,800 km beneath Earth's surface, and back to 200 million years ago.

On page 246of this issue3, Van der Voo et al. advance the geological interpretation of seismic tomography by recognizing the likely connection between a major high-velocity anomaly lying 1,500-2,800 km beneath Siberia and the subduction of an oceanic plate during Jurassic time, about 150-200 million years ago. This discovery is significant in several respects — it is the oldest slab of subducted lithosphere individually recognized in the deep mantle; it supports the idea that some slabs sink essentially to the bottom of the mantle1; and it calibrates the time-scale for sinking. Furthermore, this work shows that seismic tomography is a powerful tool for palaeogeography, providing a fresh source of information about the history of global plate motions and the processes of continental growth.

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Figure 1: Comparison of models of mantle structureat 1,500 km depth.

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  1. The Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of California, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    Mark A. Richards

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Richards, M. Prospecting for Jurassic slabs. Nature 397, 203–204 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/16574

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