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The discovery of a new primitive microcontinent between Greenland and Canada may help scientists understand how microcontinents form.
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The researchers studied how the Davis Strait plate moved and eventually cracked, forming a new microcontinent.
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The strait has been called a protocontinent, and changes in plate movements over millions of years may have been a key factor in its formation.
I need to dip in the icy waters of the West Coast Greenland It’s hard to find, but somewhere below the surface of the Davis Strait lies what scientists have declared to be a microcontinent.
It took a long time to make.
The structure between the plates Canada The movement of Greenland created the Davis Strait, which connects the Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay basins, and reorganized the Earth’s crust, resulting in a thicker continental crust. In the seahas now been declared a newly discovered primitive microcontinent (also called a primitive microcontinent).
In one study Published in Gondwana ResearchThe team of researchers recreated the area around Davis Strait. Plate tectonic movement An unusually thick layer of continental crust formed between 33 and 61 million years ago.
According to the research team, the submerged crust is about 12 to 15 miles long. West of Greenlandcalled the Davis Strait protocontinent.
“The distinct changes in plate motion occurring in the Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay are relatively free of complicating outside influences, making this region an ideal natural laboratory in which to study microcontinent formation,” said Jordan Fethian, a researcher on the study. Physics.org.
Fessian is Crack What is needed to form a microcontinent? An ongoing phenomenonAnd every earthquake could affect the break-off of the next microcontinent. “The goal of our research is to fully understand their formation and predict their future evolution,” Fessian said.
When Greenland and Canada began to move apart about 61 million years ago, the initial separation began with different plates moving from northeast to southwest, coinciding with the formation of the Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay. About 5 million years later, the plate movement changed to a more north-south direction, during which ocean straits and continental crust formed.
Studying the Davis Strait protocontinent and theorizing about its formation paves the way for understanding similar geological structures. “The mechanism of microcontinent formation we identified may be broadly applicable to other microcontinents around the world and merits further study to understand the role of plate motion changes and transpression in microcontinent break-off,” the researchers wrote in their paper.
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