Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Levander, Alan
• Schmitz, Michael
• Avé Lallemant, Han G.
• Zelt, Colin A.
• Sawyer, Dale S.
• Magnani, Maria B.
• Mann, Paul
• Christeson, Gail
• Wright, James E.
• Pavlis, Gary L.
• Pindell, James

Titel

Evolution of the Southern Caribbean Plate Boundary

Ist Teil von

• Eos (Washington, D.C.), 2006-02, Vol.87 (9), p.97-100

Ort / Verlag

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2006

Quelle

EZB Electronic Journals Library

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• It is generally accepted that the cores of the continents, called cratons, formed by the accretion of island arcs into proto‐continents and then by proto‐continental agglomeration to form the large continental masses. Mantle‐wedge processes, combined with higher melting temperatures during the Archean (2.5–3.8 billion years ago) and possibly thrust stacking of highly depleted Archean oceanic lithosphere, produced a strong, buoyant, upper mantle chemical boundary layer. This stabilizing mantle layer, known as the tectosphere, has shielded the Archean cratons from most subsequent tectonic disruption and is highly depleted in iron, providing the positive buoyancy that is required to ‘float’ the continents more than four kilometers above the surrounding ocean basins.