Chinese scientists reconstruct 270 million years of subduction history, explaining the mechanism of seamount formation
Mantle plume reconstruction reveals the origins of 40,000 seamounts, providing a unified explanation for the global distribution of seamounts and deep Earth dynamics A high-resolution model reconstructs 270 million years of subduction history; click to see how a hot-spot hypothesis is supplemented and expanded
A research team from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with collaborators, used a highresolution global data assimilation model to reconstruct Earth’s plate subduction history over the past 270 million years and simulate the evolutionary process of global mantle plumes.
This study, published on June 10 in Nature Geoscience,指出 that more than 40,000 seamounts in the world’s oceans, whether distributed in chains or scattered, are all closely related to asthenospheric thermal material activity triggered by mantle plume upwelling at the coremantle boundary.
The research team believes that this result provides a more unified explanation of the deep dynamic origins of seamounts, and also supplements and expands the traditional “hotspot hypothesis” in terms of understanding the range of seamount distribution.