Overview

• A Geology paper by teams from the University of Southampton, GFZ and the University of Florence traced the Northern Appalachian Anomaly to rifting beneath the Labrador Sea 90–80 million years ago.
• Seismic tomography reveals a 350-kilometre-wide zone of anomalously hot rock at depths of 125–200 kilometres beneath New England.
• Convective ‘drips’ propagate as a mantle wave inland at roughly 20 kilometres per million years, overturning earlier tectonic explanations for the anomaly.
• The study proposes a mirrored thermal anomaly beneath north-central Greenland that may influence ice-sheet dynamics from below.
• Researchers are expanding seismic coverage to map further convective drips and refine geodynamic models of Appalachian uplift.