Mantle Flow and Deforming Continents: From India-Asia Convergence to Pacific Subduction.

ABSTRACT: The formation of mountain belts or rift zones is commonly attributed to interactions between plates along their boundaries, but the widely distributed deformation of Asia from Himalaya to the Japan Sea and other back-arc basins is difficult to reconcile with this notion. Through comparison of the tectonic and kinematic records of the last 50 Ma with seismic tomography and anisotropy models, we show that the closure of the former Tethys Ocean and the extensional deformation of East Asia can be best explained if the asthenospheric mantle transporting India northward, forming the Himalaya and the Tibetan Plateau, reaches East Asia where it overrides the westward flowing Pacific mantle and contributes to subduction dynamics, distributing extensional deformation over a 3,000-km wide region. Thi

SUBMITTER: Jolivet L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6472563 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature