Geoscience: Searching for lost continents
Nature Communications
2017년2월1일
The discovery of three-billion-year-old minerals from under the island of Mauritius is presented in a study published in Nature Communications this week. This finding provides evidence for the presence of ancient continental crust beneath Mauritius, which would have been part of the continent ‘Mauritia’ and formed part of the ancient nucleus of Madagascar and India.
There is growing evidence that old continental crust may be present beneath young ocean-island volcanoes, when previously it was believed there was only oceanic crust. In oceanic settings, young geological hotspots that form ocean-island volcanoes may interact with old continental crustal plates and this may result in micro-continental fragments being brought to the surface, but physical evidence to support this theory has been limited.
Now, Lewis Ashwal and colleagues report the discovery of zircon crystals ranging from 2.5 to 3.0 billion years old within lavas brought up to the surface in Mauritius. They propose that these old zircons may be fragments of ancient Archaean continental crust. These findings shed new light on the mechanisms of plate tectonics in these young oceanic hotspots.
doi: 10.1038/NCOMMS14086
리서치 하이라이트
-
8월18일
Environment: Protecting global forest biodiversityNature
-
8월17일
Climate change: North Atlantic hurricane season starting earlierNature Communications
-
8월17일
Climate change: Energy institutions’ decarbonization scenarios evaluated against the Paris AgreementNature Communications
-
8월16일
Food: Modelling global famine and associated deaths from nuclear weapon detonationNature Food
-
8월12일
Climate change: The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the worldCommunications Earth & Environment
-
8월11일
Ecology: Forest responses to climate changeNature