When the Baja California peninsula broke from mainland Mexico nearly 12 million years ago it gave rise to the Gulf of California. New research suggests that this process of continental rifting was greatly accelerated due to tectonic forces on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean. The finding comes from a study published in Science,… Continue Reading Faraway tectonic forces may have accelerated the Gulf of California rifting
The Complicated New Origins of Pangea’s Big Breakup
The Triassic Period ended when a gargantuan amount of molten igneous rock called the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) spewed out of the Earth’s mantle and into the Earth’s crust beneath what is now the eastern Appalachian foothills. Millions of years later, the supercontinent Pangea began to rip open, with the east coast of what… Continue Reading The Complicated New Origins of Pangea’s Big Breakup
How Activity in Earth’s Mantle Led the Ancient Ancestors of Elephants, Giraffes, and Humans into Asia and Africa
What roils beneath the Earth’s surface may feel a world away, but the activity can help forge land masses that dictate ocean circulation, climate patterns, and even animal activity and evolution. In fact, scientists believe that a plume of hot rocks that burst from the Earth’s mantle millions of years ago could be an important… Continue Reading How Activity in Earth’s Mantle Led the Ancient Ancestors of Elephants, Giraffes, and Humans into Asia and Africa
North America is Dripping from Below, Geoscientists Discover
Researchers have discovered that the underside of the North American continent is dripping away in blobs of rock — and that the remnants of a tectonic plate sinking in the Earth’s mantle may be the reason why. A paper published in Nature Geoscience describes the phenomenon, which was discovered at The University of Texas at… Continue Reading North America is Dripping from Below, Geoscientists Discover
Field Blog: Studying the Blake Plateau
An ocean research cruise led by the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics is off the coast of Florida surveying the tectonics and movement of the crust hundreds of feet beneath the ocean floor. Follow the expedition’s blog as they look for clues to the break-up of Earth’s last supercontinent Pangea, and how that massive event shaped the magmatic activity below the crust today… Continue Reading Field Blog: Studying the Blake Plateau