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The Central Andean Plateau in South America was formed when the earth’s crust dripped into the mantle. This condition occurred thousands of centuries ago.
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Nationalgeographic.co.id—It’s necessary—the place we stand on—is only the thinnest layer compared to that underneath, the mantle.
A recent study reports that our planet’s crustdripping‘ is like honey when poured into a spoon called lithospheric dripping (drops lithosphere). The report was revealed by researchers from geological observations in Andes MountainsSouth America.
The paper is entitled Symptomatic lithospheric drips triggering fast topographic rise and crustal deformation in the Central Andes and published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment on June 28, 2022.
“We have confirmed that the deformation of the surface area of the Andes Mountains has a large part of the underlying lithosphere that collapses,” said Julia Andersen, lead author of the paper from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto, Canada.
“Due to its high density, it drips like cold syrup or honey deeper into the planet’s interior and is likely responsible for two major tectonic events in the Middle Andes – shifting the region’s surface topography by hundreds of kilometers and both rattling and stretching the surface crust itself.” he continued, quoted from University of Toronto release.
Understanding the earth’s crust dripping is a relatively new concept in the field of tectonics. Several other studies have identified the crust of the earth dripping in parts of the world such as the Central Anatolian Plateau in Turkey, and the Great Basin in the western US. Andersen and team, through this study, confirmed that some areas of the Andes Mountains were forming in a similar way.
What happened to the Central Andean Plateau was the result of the formation of the Puna and Altiplano highlands, the researchers said. The process of its formation occurs due to the Nazca plate sliding under the South American plate which is known as plate tectonic subduction. Subduction causes parts of the heavy plate to sink into the mantle.
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