Other
Scientific paper
Aug 1999
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999e%26psl.171....7v&link_type=abstract
Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 171, Issue 1, p. 7-20.
Other
82
Scientific paper
Tomographic imaging of the mantle under Tibet, India and the adjacent Indian Ocean reveals several zones of relatively high P-wave velocities at various depths. Under the Hindu Kush region in northeastern Afghanistan and southern Tajikistan, a regional northward-dipping slab is seen in the entire upper 600 km of the mantle and is apparently still attached to the lithosphere of the Indian plate. Under northern Pakistan this same slab shows a roll-over structure with the deeper portion overturned and dipping southward, as can also be seen in the distribution of earthquake hypocenters. Farther east-southeast (e.g., in the vicinity of Nepal), a well-resolved anomaly below 450 km depth is connected to the slab under the Hindu Kush, but seems to be separated from the lithosphere above 350 km. These upper-mantle anomalies are interpreted as the remnants of delaminated sub-continental lithosphere that went down when Greater India continued to converge northward with Asia after ~45 Ma. The deeper high-velocity anomalies under the Indian sub-continent appear clearly separated from the shallower ones as well as from each other, and are inferred to represent remnants of oceanic lithospheric slabs that have sunk into the lower mantle and were subsequently overridden by the Indian plate. They occur at depths between 1000 and 2300 km and occasionally descend down to the core-mantle boundary. The anomalies form three parallel WNW-ESE striking zones. We interpret the two southern zones as remnants of oceanic lithosphere that was subducted when the Neo-Tethys Ocean closed between India and Tibet in the Cretaceous and earliest Tertiary. The northern deep-mantle zone under northern Afghanistan, the Himalayas and the Lhasa block in southern Tibet may represent the last-subducted remnant of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean, which is thought to have closed before the Hauterivian stage of the Early Cretaceous. The middle zone continues southeastward as a rather straight high-velocity zone towards Sumatra, where it becomes convex southward and parallel to the subduction zone under the Sunda arc. Comparison of this straight middle zone near India with the shallower (upper 600-1000 km) northern zone, which displays a cusp-like shape near the Yunnan (SW China) Syntaxis of the eastern Himalayas, supports the notion that the shallow northern zone represents later subduction than the deeper middle zone. The suggestion of a counterclockwise rotation (>20°) of the Indian plate during Tertiary indentation of Asia is supported by these features. The present-day latitudes of 5°-35°N of the deep slabs under India and adjacent areas correspond to the approximate paleolatitudes of the Cretaceous subduction zones. The slab remnants in the middle mantle occur therefore near the ancient locations where they started their downward journey, which implies that lateral movements in the deeper mantle were not large.
Bijwaard Harmen
Spakman Wim
Van der Voo Rob
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