Saturday08 February 2025
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Geological drama: A rupture found deep within the Earth is distorting the planet's surface (photos included).

A new study reveals that the ancient oceanic plate beneath the planet's surface is opening horizontally.
Геологическая сенсация: в недрах Земли обнаружен разрыв, искажающий поверхность планеты (фото)

The history of Earth spans over 4.5 billion years, during which it has undergone numerous changes. For millions of years, the Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates have drifted toward each other, while the oceanic crust between them, known as the Neotethys oceanic plate, has been pushed deeper into the Earth's interior. When the plates eventually collided, their edges shifted and rose, forming the Zagros Mountains, as noted by IFLScience.

In a recent study, researchers discovered that the Zagros Mountains are caught in a geological drama: the ancient oceanic plate beneath modern-day Iraq is tearing horizontally. This massive underground rift, extending from southeastern Turkey to northwestern Iran, affects how the Earth's surface bends and shifts, altering the landscape as it evolves.

A team from the University of Göttingen focused on examining how the Zagros Mountains in the Iraqi Kurdistan region have changed over the past 20 million years. The results suggest that the weight of the mountains causes the planet's surface to bend, creating basins that fill with sediments—one notable example being Mesopotamia. Another surprising finding was that a basin, submerged with sediments in the southeastern area, is actually deeper than previously thought, measuring 3-4 kilometers.

According to the lead author of the study, Dr. Renas Koshnav, a research associate in the Department of Structural Geology and Geometry at the University of Göttingen, their findings indicate that the descending oceanic plate beneath the region also helps pull down the Earth's surface along with the mass of the enormous mountains.

Considering the moderate topography in the northwestern part of the Zagros, it was astonishing to discover that so much sediment had accumulated in the area studied by the researchers. This, according to Dr. Koshnav, suggests that the land depression is actually larger than what could have been caused by the weight of the mountains, as previously believed.

ирак, ближний восток

This plate is thought to be pulling the region downward, creating space for an increasing accumulation of sediments. Toward Turkey, the sediment-filled basin becomes significantly shallower, indicating that the plate has detached in this area, weakening the downward pull.

The team believes that the data suggest the Neotethys oceanic plate is effectively submerging into the Earth's mantle. Moving forward, the researchers intend to focus on understanding how the planet's internal processes influence the Zagros mountain region—this could shed light on how deep Earth processes shape geological features on the planet's surface.

Dr. Koshnav also believes that their work contributes to understanding how the rigid outer shell of our planet functions. Geological processes on Earth take an extraordinarily long time, but little remains unchanged in the overall geology of the Earth. For instance, some of the most dramatic changes in recent times can be found along the East African Rift System (EARS), one of the largest rifts in the world, stretching down for thousands of kilometers across several African countries.