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Earth science

Mantle mapped in the desert

Nature volume 432, pages 156–157 (2004)Cite this article

How does variation in ocean-floor rocks arise from differences in the temperature of their mantle source? A new angle on the question comes from painstaking work on one of the geological wonders of the world.

One hundred million years ago, as the Tethys Sea separating the supercontinents of Gondwanaland and Laurasia closed, a huge chunk of mid-oceanic rocks was pushed up and onto the neighbouring continent. These rocks are now exposed in the mountains of northern Oman, running from the sands of Arabia to the Indian Ocean, and they constitute the ‘Oman ophiolite’ — at 30,000 km2, possibly the largest outcrop of ocean crust and upper mantle exposed on the continents and one of the geological wonders of the world. This is not any old ocean floor, but a ‘fossil’ spreading centre that was once the site of undersea volcanic activity.

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Figure 1: Rough country.

G. CEULENEER

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  1. Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, CNRS, 14 Avenue E. Belin, Toulouse, 31400, France

    Georges Ceuleneer

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  1. Georges Ceuleneer
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Ceuleneer, G. Mantle mapped in the desert. Nature 432, 156–157 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/432156a

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