Mountain range formation and plate tectonics in the Mediterranean region integrally studied for the first time

Authored by uu.nl and submitted by barcelonaKIZ
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Most of this continent was situated underwater and formed shallow, tropical seas in which sediment deposited, for example in large coral reefs. The sedimentary rocks, in particular, were scraped off when the rest of the continent subducted into the mantle. These scrapings are now the mountain belts of the Apennines, parts of the Alps, the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey.

The Mediterranean region is geologically among the most complex regions on Earth. Plate tectonics, the theory that explains the formation of continents and oceans, assumes that the various plates of the Earth do not internally deform when they move with respect to each other along large fault zones. However, in the Mediterranean region, and especially Turkey, that is not the case. 'It is quite simply a geological mess: everything is curved, broken, and stacked. Compared to this, the Himalayas, for example, represent a rather simple system. There you can follow several large fault lines across a distance of more than 2000 km.’

ActiveShard on September 28th, 2019 at 04:05 UTC »

Why are so many comments on this post temoved

gentlyfailing on September 28th, 2019 at 02:44 UTC »

There's one oddity that I know about in the Mediterranean, and it's this: mount Etna behaves strangely as if it's both a hot-spot volcano(like Hawaii volcanoes) and like subduction volcanoes (eg Mount St Helens). However, there's been no mantle plume identified. https://www.nature.com/articles/35091056

Is this related to the new funding?

zejai on September 28th, 2019 at 01:45 UTC »

The rest of the piece of continental plate, which was about 100 km thick, plunged under Southern Europe into the earth's mantle, where we can still trace it with seismic waves up to a depth of 1500 km.

Fascinating, I always thought the mantle was completely liquid. Do I understand this correctly, after subduction solid pieces of a plate can float around and take over 100 million years to melt?