Scientists say that the ocean plate has long been lost, diving deep in the coat, pulling the shell above. However, the plate also breaks under the mountains of Zagros in Iraq, when it falls down, removing part of the load from the lying skin.
This tearing process probably took place on the west side of the mountain band, where the Kurdistan region in Iraq gets into Turkey, finds latest research. The tear is now heading to the north -west Iran.
These dynamics will not be immediately obvious on the surface, but reveal how the coat and shell work together to shape the topography of the Earth, the scientists say in a brand new study, published on November 25, 2024 in the journal Solid earth.
The ocean plate was once the sea DNA Neotethys – the ocean that was created when the supercontinent of Pangea broke to the northern continent, Laurasia and the southern continent of Gondwana about 195 million years ago. The latest study showed that Neotethys closed over 20 million years ago, an ocean shell that was at the root.
“This album pulls the region down from below”, writer of the study Pure KoshnawGeology researcher at the University of Göttingen in Germany, he said in statement.
When Neotethys closed, the ocean shell passed under the Eurasian continent. The continental part of the Arab tile, which is at the basis of modern Iraq and Saudi Arabia, was prolonged from the back, which caused a collision with Eurasia. This collision created the mountains that pressed to the skin around them, creating depression.
These mountains have been eroded this depression for hundreds of thousands of years, and their settlements form a Mesopotamian plain, wherein the Tiger and Euphrate rivers flow.
Koshnaw and his colleagues saw that on the south -eastern side of this plane there is a particularly thick layer of sediments with a depth of 1.9 to 2.5 miles (3 to 4 kilometers). They drew the attention of the area and used computer modeling to state that the weight of the mountains themselves cannot keep in mind such a deep division. Instead, they found that this region is pulled by the stays of the Neotethys ocean plate, which is still immersed in the coat. But the plate is also torn when it goes down.
“In the direction of Turkey, depression filled with sediment becomes much shallower, which suggests that the album has broken in this area, soothing the power of pulling down,” said Koshnaw.
Understanding these dynamics may also help in looking for natural resources, resembling iron, phosphate and copper, which arise in sedimentary rocks, scientists say. Disadvantages created in A collision between Arabic and Eurasian boards Also spend large, deadly earthquakes.
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