The establishment of the supervolcano underneath Yellowstone is a affair of het up debate among geologist and volcanologists . The ( relatively ) recent shaping of the hotspot has people wondering how it came to be . The independent suspicion was a feather of live material come up directly from the inner layers of the planet , but new research suggests something dissimilar .
Professor Ying Zhou , from Virginia Tech , has suggested that an ancient pelagic plate might be the campaign of the hotspot . As report inNature Geoscience , the researchers used seismographic data to construct an “ image ” of what the Earth beneath Yellowstone looks like . She get a line something anomalous between 400 and 640 km ( 250 and 400 miles ) underneath the area .
This queer structure is part of the Farallon home , an ancient oceanic plate that sunk underneath the North American plate millions of years ago . By sinking down toward the drapery , the plate pushed raging material towards the Earth’s surface , thus generate massive melting in the impudence that ultimately lead to the establishment of the supervolcano , fit in to Zhou .
" In this research , there was no evidence of heat coming directly up from the Earth ’s core to power the airfoil vent at Yellowstone , " Zhou state in astatement . " or else , the surreptitious images we captured intimate that Yellowstone volcano were produce by a mammoth ancient oceanic plate that dove under the Western United States about 30 million years ago . This ancient pelagic plate fall apart into piece , result in perturbation of unusual rocks in the mantle which led to volcanic eruptions in the retiring 16 million days . "
The demeanour of Yellowstone is extremely “ plume ” like . It is at the end of a hotspot track of volcanos , something that a feather would form as the tectonic plate impress above it . This is something witness in Hawaii . But the presence of a plume has not been support , and Zhou fence that it ’s not there at all . The hotspot track is create by the Farallon plate moving underneath the North American plate .
" The next step will be to increase the resolution of the X - electron beam - like images of the underground rock , " she added . " More elaborated look-alike of the unusual rock in the cryptic dry land will permit us to use computer simulation to recreate the atomization of the gigantic oceanic plate and test dissimilar scenarios of how rock thaw and magma feeding system work for the Yellowstone volcanoes . "
The evidence for a model without the feather is compelling , but it is not the concluding Scripture on the matter . It is potential for both mannikin to coexist . Hopefully , future work will render an answer to the origin of Yellowstone once and for all .
