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Dynamics of the abrupt change in Pacific Plate motion around 50 million years ago

Nature Geoscience volume 15, pages 74–78 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

A drastic change in plate tectonics and mantle convection occurred around 50 Ma as exemplified by the prominent Hawaiian–Emperor Bend. Both an abrupt Pacific Plate motion change and a change in mantle plume dynamics have been proposed to account for the Hawaiian–Emperor Bend, but debates surround the relative contribution of the two mechanisms. Here we build kinematic plate reconstructions and high-resolution global dynamic models to quantify the amount of Pacific Plate motion change. We find Izanagi Plate subduction, followed by demise of the Izanagi–Pacific Ridge and Izu–Bonin–Mariana subduction initiation alone, is incapable of causing a sudden change in plate motion, challenging the conventional hypothesis on the mechanisms of Pacific Plate motion change. Instead, Palaeocene slab pull from Kronotsky intraoceanic subduction in the northern Pacific exerts a northward pull on the Pacific Plate, while its Eocene demise leads to a sudden 30–35° change in plate motion, accounting for about half of the Hawaiian–Emperor Bend. We suggest the Pacific Plate motion change and hotspot drift due to plume dynamics could have contributed nearly equally to the formation of the Hawaiian–Emperor Bend. Such a scenario is consistent with available constraints from global plate circuits, palaeomagnetic data and geodynamic models.

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Fig. 1: Alternative plate reconstruction models from Late Cretaceous to Eocene.
Fig. 2: Geodynamic models used to predict plate motions.
Fig. 3: Change of the azimuth of the Pacific Plate motion with time.
Fig. 4: Computed tracks of the Pacific Plate motion and the residual hotspot drift.

Data availability

The raw data for the paper have been deposited on Caltech Data (https://doi.org/10.22002/D1.2150), including the digitized alternative plate reconstruction and the predicted plate motion. The authors declare that all other data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and its Supplementary Information files with their sources annotated in the text.

Code availability

The plate kinematic tool GPlates and its python version can be accessed at www.gplates.org/. The original version of CitcomS is available at www.geodynamics.org/cig/software/citcoms/. The adaptive nonlinear Stokes solver (Rhea) used to predict plate motion is available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

J.H. and M.G. were partially supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) through awards EAR-1645775 and EAR-2009935. J.R. was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, under contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. G.S. was partially supported by NSF grants EAR-1646337 and DMS-1723211. Computations were carried out on the NSF-supported Stampede-2 and Frontera supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computer Center under allocations TG-EAR160027, TG-DPP130002 and FTA-SUB-CalTech. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Seismological Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Jiashun Hu & Michael Gurnis

  2. Department of Earth and Space Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Jiashun Hu

  3. Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL, USA

    Johann Rudi

  4. Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Georg Stadler

  5. School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    R. Dietmar Müller

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Contributions

J.H. and M.G. designed the study. J.H. carried out the numerical experiments. J.R. and G.S. expanded the functionality of the adaptive nonlinear Stokes solver Rhea and provided expertise in scientific computing. R.D.M. helped with plate reconstruction. All authors participated in result interpretation and manuscript preparation.

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Correspondence to Jiashun Hu.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Geoscience thanks Claudio Faccenna and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: Stefan Lachowycz and Rebecca Neely in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Representative data showing construction of a paleo slab with pyGplates.

Representative data showing construction of a paleo slab with pyGplates. a, The thermal age of the lithosphere within the slab. b, Depth of the slab. c, A cross section of the slab with plates labeled as NAM for North America, FAR for Farallon, VAN for Vancouver and PAC for Pacific. The location is labeled in b.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Representative global thermal structure.

Representative global thermal structure. This example shows the input for the geodynamic model based on the traditional plate reconstruction9 at 47 Ma.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Predicted plate motion with the traditional plate reconstruction that incorporates the Izanagi-Pacific Ridge subduction.

Predicted plate motion at 60 (a), 50 (b) and 47 (c) Ma, based on the traditional plate reconstruction that incorporates the Izanagi-Pacific Ridge subduction.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Model with plume-head push.

Model with plume-head push. a, b and c show the thermal structures of the forward CitcomS model with plume-head. a and b show a cross section (see the location of the cross section in the inserted panel) and a map view (at 200 km) of the initial plume head at 120 Ma. c represents the thermal structure of the forward CitcomS model at 50 Ma. d represents the thermal structure of the CitcomS model at 50 Ma without imposing the plume head at 120 Ma. The difference between c and d represents the contribution from the plume head, which is highlighted with the red circle in c. The difference is superimposed on the thermal structure of the forward model at 50 Ma based on the traditional model, to test the effect of plume-head push, which is shown in e. In e, the green, orange, black and red arrows represent the geodynamically predicted velocities without plume-head push, the geodynamically predicted velocities with plume-head push, the reconstructed velocities from ref. 9 and the reconstructed velocities from ref. 10, respectively.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Comparison of the models with and without asthenosphere.

Comparison of the models with (b) and without (c) asthenosphere. In a, the green, orange, black and red arrows represent the geodynamically predicted velocities without asthenosphere, the geodynamically predicted velocities with asthenosphere, the reconstructed velocities from ref. 9 and the reconstructed velocities from ref. 10, respectively.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Testing the effect of the nascent IBM slab at 50 Ma.

Testing the effect of the nascent IBM slab at 50 Ma. a shows the predicted plate motion for the models with the nascent IBM slab (green arrows) and without the nascent IBM slab (orange arrows). b, c and d show the viscosity along the cross sections labeled in a for the model without the IBM slab. e, f and g show the viscosity along the cross sections labeled in a for the model with the IBM slab.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Testing the effect of nascent IBM slab at 47 Ma.

Same as Extended Data Fig. 6, but testing the effect of nascent IBM slab at 47 Ma.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Computations of the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount hotspot tracks and plume motion.

Computations of the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount hotspot tracks and plume motion. We combine the Pacific Plate motion change and the hotspot drift path to reconstruct the Hawaiian-Emperor Seamount chain. For the Pacific Plate motion, we use the preferred geodynamic Kronotsky-SUB track that combines the Pacific Plate motion from Müller et al.9 after 47 Ma and from the geodynamic models that incorporates the Kronotsky subduction before 47 Ma. The residual hotspot drift path in Fig. 4 is used in a, while the hotspot drift in Hassan et al.5 is used in b. To first order, the two hotspot drift paths are similar.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Geodynamically predicted horizontal velocity in the vicinity of Hawaiian plume as a function of depth for different models.

Geodynamically predicted horizontal velocity in the vicinity of Hawaiian plume as a function of depth for different models. For each depth, the velocities are averaged over the region from 190°E to 220°E and from 10°N to 35°N. The blue arrows represent the averaged velocities at 60 Ma, the red arrows at 50 Ma and the black arrows at 47 Ma.

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Hu, J., Gurnis, M., Rudi, J. et al. Dynamics of the abrupt change in Pacific Plate motion around 50 million years ago. Nat. Geosci. 15, 74–78 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-021-00862-6

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