Yellowstone Plume Drives Neogene North American Plate Motion Change

Abstract

Earth's surface moves in response to a combination of tectonic forces from the thermally convective mantle and/or plate boundary forces. The former arise from the time-evolving mantle buoyancy field (e.g., , while the latter arise from the brittle interaction between two or more tectonic plates (e.g.,

Evidence for active upper mantle flow in the Atlantic and Indo-Australian realms since the Upper Jurassic from hiatus maps and spreading rate changes

“…A prominent change occurs from the Base of Paleocene to Base of Eocene , when an extensive no hiatus signal transforms to mostly blank regions and hiatus, indicative of growing topography. From the Base of Eocene to Base of Miocene hiatus signal surrounds the current location of Yellowstone, starting with hiatus to the northeast of the current plume location and leading to hiatus located in the Columbia Plateau regions and the Interior Plains, as noted also by Friedrich et al [ 41 ] and Stotz et al [ 60 ].

Figure 4 Same as figure 3 , but centred on North America.

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Variable plate kinematics promotes changes in back-arc deformation regime along the north-eastern Eurasia plate boundary

“…S1 ), following results obtained by 24 . The process for implementing time-dependent velocities within the I2VIS numerical code relies on the application, to the oceanic plate velocity, of coefficients computed through four primary steps: (i) establishing key times for the transition of plate velocities; (ii) determining the time interval for which the plate velocity is constant; (iii) introducing a linear transitional change over a 1 Ma period before each key time, transitioning from the previous to the subsequent velocity change; (iv) keeping the constant plate velocity throughout the time interval specified in step (ii) 103 – 107 . Velocity changes are applied with the 1 Ma transition as shown also in Fig.…”