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Decrease in oceanic crustal thickness since the breakup of Pangaea

Nature Geoscience volume 10, pages 58–61 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Earth’s mantle has cooled by 6–11 °C every 100 million years since the Archaean, 2.5 billion years ago. In more recent times, the surface heat loss that led to this temperature drop may have been enhanced by plate-tectonic processes, such as continental breakup, the continuous creation of oceanic lithosphere at mid-ocean ridges and subduction at deep-sea trenches. Here we use a compilation of marine seismic refraction data from ocean basins globally to analyse changes in the thickness of oceanic crust over time. We find that oceanic crust formed in the mid-Jurassic, about 170 million years ago, is 1.7 km thicker on average than crust produced along the present-day mid-ocean ridge system. If a higher mantle temperature is the cause of thicker Jurassic ocean crust, the upper mantle may have cooled by 15–20 °C per 100 million years over this time period. The difference between this and the long-term mantle cooling rate indeed suggests that modern plate tectonics coincide with greater mantle heat loss. We also find that the increase of ocean crustal thickness with plate age is stronger in the Indian and Atlantic oceans compared with the Pacific Ocean. This observation supports the idea that upper mantle temperature in the Jurassic was higher in the wake of the fragmented supercontinent Pangaea due to the effect of continental insulation.

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Figure 1: Global map of seismic data and ages of ocean crust8.
Figure 2: Correlation between oceanic crustal thickness and plate age.
Figure 3: Plate reconstructions of the central Atlantic basin at 170 Ma and 110 Ma.

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Acknowledgements

H.J.A.V.A. and J.L.H. received funding for this research from the National Science Foundation (grant OCE-1348454). J.K.D. and L.A.L. were supported by the PLATES project at the Institute for Geophysics. We thank L. Lavier for discussions of this work. This is UTIG contribution 3013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, Jackson School of Geosciences, Austin, Texas 78758, USA

    Harm J. A. Van Avendonk, Joshua K. Davis, Jennifer L. Harding & Lawrence A. Lawver

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  1. Harm J. A. Van Avendonk
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  2. Joshua K. Davis
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Contributions

H.J.A.V.A. and J.L.H. compiled the marine seismic refraction data from the science literature. J.K.D. and L.A.L. carried out plate-tectonic reconstructions. H.J.A.V.A. wrote the paper with contributions and edits from all other authors.

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Correspondence to Harm J. A. Van Avendonk.

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Van Avendonk, H., Davis, J., Harding, J. et al. Decrease in oceanic crustal thickness since the breakup of Pangaea. Nature Geosci 10, 58–61 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2849

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