'Lost' Tectonic Plate Found Beneath California

Interesting story and interesting timing given all the talk about a massive California MegaQuake we've heard in recent years.

news.yahoo.com...

A tectonic plate that disappeared under North America millions of years ago still peeks out in central California and Mexico, new research finds.

The Farallon oceanic plate was once nestled between the Pacific and North American plates, which were converging around 200 million years ago at what would become the San Andreas fault along the Pacific coast. This slow geological movement forced the Farallon plate under North America, a process called subduction.

Much of the Farallon plate got pushed down into the mantle, the gooey molten layer below the Earth's crust. Off the coast, parts of the plate fragmented, leaving some remnants at the surface, stuck to the Pacific plate.

Now, new research published Monday (March 18) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that these pieces of Farallon plate are attached to much larger chunks at the surface. In fact, part of the Baja region of Mexico and part of central California near the Sierra Nevada mountains sit upon slabs of Farallon plate.

The finding solves a mystery of California geology. Earth scientists use seismic waves (either recorded from earthquakes or created with dynamic charges or other methods) to map out the region beneath the Earth's surface. Softer and hotter materials slow seismic waves down. The waves move faster through stiffer, cooler material......................

-obligatory impeccable timing comment here-

In all seriousness, really? How do you just 'find' something like this?

That is interesting, it might explain the theoryof the lost continent of Pacific and all south american mythology connected to the great civilization of MU...

Ive heard of people losing mobile phones or car keys, but never a tectonic plate!

Do tectonic plates even exist?

I (Paul Lowman) think this is a mistake. We now know, from space exploration,
that bodies essentially similar to the Earth in composition and struc-
ture have developed differentiated crusts, mountain belts, rift valleys,
and volcanos without plate tectonics, in fact without plates.
Furthermore, we now know, thanks partly to remote sensing from
space, that the Earth’s crust can not realistically be considered a
mosaic of 12 discrete rigid plates. For these and other reasons, I dis-
agree with certain aspects of plate tectonic theory, as will be
explained in the text.

Exploring Space, Exploring Earth: New Understanding of the Earth from Space Research

www.nhbs.com...

reply to post by Disconnected Sociopath


So, a couple of questions....one, how did they "find" plates that far under, and/or determine that they were attached to something else? Two, how do they know when these formed, or what was there so long ago? I could see stating that they are studying some subterranean plates, but claiming they are however old, or whatever, seems like a huge stretch.