Continents aren’t torn apart without warning, and oceans certainly aren’t created out of the blue. Instead, these changes are announced millions of years before they’re actually achieved, by the activity of molten rock in Earth’s mantle.
According to a new study in Nature Geoscience, a plume of molten rock is pulsing beneath Africa. Pounding “like a beating heart,” according to a press release, this mantle plume is fueling volcanism and tectonic activity at the Afar region of Ethiopia, cleaving its tectonic plates and creating a new ocean basin.
“We found that the mantle beneath Afar is not uniform or stationary — it pulses, and these pulses carry distinct chemical signatures,” said Swansea University researcher Emma Watts, who worked on the study while at the University of Southampton, according to the release. “These ascending pulses of partially molten mantle are channelled by the rifting plates above. That’s important for how we ...
