Over 400 million years ago, an upwelling of hot rock from Earth's mantle wrenched apart the crust in Mongolia, creating an ocean that survived for 115 million years.
Geoscientists can fairly accurately reconstruct the breakup of the last supercontinent, Pangea, 250 million years ago. But prior to that, it's difficult to model exactly how the mantle and the crust interacted. The researchers began doing fieldwork in northwest Mongolia where rocks from these continent-building collisions are exposed on the surface, in 2019, studying the ages and chemistry of the ancient rock layers. They found that between about 410 million and 415 million years ago, an ocean called the Mongol-Okhotsk Ocean opened up in the region. The chemistry of the volcanic rocks that accompanied this rift revealed the presence of a mantle plume — a stream of particularly hot, buoyant mantle rock.
"Mantle plumes are usually involved in the first stage of the Wilson cycle: breakup of continents and opening of ocean, such as the Atlantic Ocean," study lead author Mingshuai Zhu, a professor of geology and geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Live Science.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: Utoday_en - 🏆 295. / 63 Read more »
Source: Mynorthwest - 🏆 438. / 53 Read more »
Source: fox13seattle - 🏆 328. / 59 Read more »
Source: fox13seattle - 🏆 328. / 59 Read more »
Source: BGR - 🏆 234. / 63 Read more »
Source: SciTechDaily1 - 🏆 84. / 68 Read more »