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Researchers led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences found two tears in the Arabian Plate beneath southeastern Iran using seismic data from 69 stations.
Researchers led by a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found evidence of two giant tears in the Arabian Plate beneath southeastern Iran, according to a study published in Nature Geoscience.
The tears are located beneath the Zagros Mountains region. One tear is horizontal, where the Zagros collision zone meets the Makran subduction zone. The second is a smaller vertical tear closer to the surface, near the Makran Trench.
The researchers attribute the tearing to a mismatch between two parts of the plate. One part is oceanic lithosphere, once part of the ancient Neo-Tethys Ocean, made of thinner, denser basalt rock that is being pushed under a neighboring plate through subduction. The other part is continental lithosphere, thicker but less dense, with lighter, granite-like rock that resists being pushed underground and instead forms mountains when it meets resistance.
"We show that in the Makran subduction zone, the oceanic lithosphere has continuously subducted to depths of at least 450 km, whereas in the Zagros collision zone to the west, the continental lithosphere has subducted no deeper than 300 km, resulting in east–southward slab tearing and detachment," write the researchers in their paper.
The researchers used a network of 69 seismic monitoring stations to detect vibrations from distant earthquakes. The recordings were taken between March 2017 and September 2018. Because seismic vibrations change speed based on rock temperature and density, the data allowed the team to build a picture of tectonic activity deep underground.
The researchers also identified a second tear that probably initiated at the junction between the Makran Trench and the transform boundary and has propagated southward as the continental plate advances northward.
Study models indicate the tears have been progressing for several million years and are likely to eventually meet.
"While the two tears initiate independently, the intervening continental-oceanic boundary segment is progressively consumed as tearing advances," write the researchers.
"This progressive linkage is expected to eventually drive coalescence of the two tears."
The researchers say hot magma is already filling some of the gaps caused by the ruptures, and the next question is how the tears and their possible merging might affect volcanic activity in the region.
The researchers describe the coexistence of the two tearing modes as a rare snapshot of the short-lived early transition from oceanic subduction to continental collision, a key stage in the Wilson Cycle that describes how oceans are made, expand, and gradually vanish as tectonic plates move.
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This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.
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