When the Earth's crust tears apart and forms a new ocean, one side of the continent sometimes thins out much more than the other.
When the Earth's crust tears apart and forms a new ocean, one side of the continent sometimes thins out much more than the other. In other cases, both edges remain surprisingly balanced. Why? A study co-authored by UNIL reveals that continents retain a geological memory of the past, which influences the way they deform. This discovery could help assess future carbon storage sites.
For hundreds of millions of years, continents have been stretching and separating to make way for new oceans. But these separations do not always occur in the same way: Sometimes, the continents on both sides of a future ocean thin out evenly, as if the Earth were opening up uniformly. Other times, one continental side thins significantly, while the other remains thicker. We generally refer to these as symmetrical or asymmetrical continental margins.
Until now, the scientific community believed that this difference was mainly due to external factors such as the temperature of the Earth's mantle, the composition of the rocks, or the amount of magma. In collaboration with researchers from the Faculty of Geosciences and Environment at the University of Lausanne (UNIL), an international study sheds new light on the subject. Published in the journal Geology , it reveals that the internal structure of rocks, inherited from past geological events, plays a key role in how the lithosphere (the rigid outermost rocky shell of the Earth) tears apart.
Read More: University of Lausanne
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