A new study suggests that carbonatite metasomatism, not silicate metasomatism as previously thought, was dominant prior to the removal of the North China Craton in the early Cretaceous.
Lithosphere
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Frequency Dependent Plates
Rocks stretch, break, and flow, depending on how and under which conditions they are loaded. A new formulation to better capture Earth’s rheology is explored in the context of plate thickness.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Strain Rate: The Overlooked Control on Earthquake Depth
Regional strain rate may play as significant a role as temperature in governing the depth distribution of earthquakes in mantle lithosphere.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Revealing the Arctic Crust
A new model, ArcCRUST, reveals with unprecedent resolution the geometry and the thermal state of the oceanic crust of the High Arctic and Circum-Arctic domain.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
The Many Magmatic Modifications to the African Continent
How the very slow moving African Continent, with a lithosphere of quite varied age elements and thickness, has responded to ongoing asthenospheric modification.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
A Hole in Earth’s Surface
Research shows that a broken lithosphere underneath the island of Hawai'i could explain the island's patterns of seismic activity.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Aftershocks of Old Quakes Still Shake New Madrid Seismic Zone
Geodetic data show that earthquakes in 1450 and 1811–1812 may be responsible for present-day seismic activity in the region.