Geodynamics articles from across Nature Portfolio

The processes that control the deformation and eventual destruction of Earth’s oldest continental crust are unclear. Mantle flow models suggest subduction played a role in the deformation of the North China Craton.

This study investigates the history of graphitic carbon in two ancient North American mountain belts related to Nuna supercontinent assembly. Using rhenium–osmium and uranium–lead dating, the research reveals that biogenic graphite was hydrothermally remobilized in shear zones during late orogenesis, indicating periodic carbon cycling over 200 million years.

Mesozoic deformation of the North China Craton occurred via lithospheric thickening followed by thinning and extension triggered by flat-slab subduction and rollback, according to four-dimensional mantle flow models of the plate–mantle system.

The upwelling mantle beneath Iceland underwent melt depletion at least 1 billion years ago and is therefore compositionally buoyant, according to a study of neodymium and hafnium isotope ratios in peridotites from the Charlie Gibbs Transform Zone.

Enhanced chemical weathering following continental breakup may have driven a succession of Mesozoic oceanic anoxic events, according to tectonic and biogeochemical modelling.

A cylindrical, high-velocity anomaly, is identified beneath the Emeishan large igneous province in southwest China, using joint inversion of Rayleigh wave dispersions and receiver functions, and interpreted as a translithospheric magma plumbing system

The processes that control the deformation and eventual destruction of Earth’s oldest continental crust are unclear. Mantle flow models suggest subduction played a role in the deformation of the North China Craton.

This study investigates the history of graphitic carbon in two ancient North American mountain belts related to Nuna supercontinent assembly. Using rhenium–osmium and uranium–lead dating, the research reveals that biogenic graphite was hydrothermally remobilized in shear zones during late orogenesis, indicating periodic carbon cycling over 200 million years.

Computational simulations of Venus’s geodynamics show the formation of large tessera plateaus. Matching of the models with spacecraft orbiter data constrains the mechanism that may have formed the topography of Ishtar Terra and other plateaus on Venus, suggesting that these features might have formed by a mechanism similar to that of the early continents on Earth.

High-resolution numerical simulations show that subduction of the Indian plate peeled off the mantle lithosphere from the Tibetan Plateau. This process successfully explains first-order observations of the stepwise growth of the plateau, the migration of magmatism in the region and its seismic properties.

Recent seismological studies challenge the traditional view that the interface between the core and mantle is a straightforward discontinuity. As seismology is pushed to its observational limits, a complex - potentially compositionally layered - region between the core and mantle is emerging.

Hydrous minerals within the Earth affect volatile cycling and mantle geodynamics. Jun Tsuchiya explains how stable phases of these minerals are being uncovered at increasingly high pressures.