Strange Seismic Wave Arrivals lead to discovery of an overturned slab in the Mediterranean
Strange seismic wave arrivals from a 2010 earthquake under Spain were the clues that led to an unexpected discovery beneath the western Mediterranean: a subducted oceanic slab that has completely overturned.
The waveforms paint a picture of a slab that descended rapidly into the Earth’s mantle and flipped over, so that the water it carried on its surface as it descended is now beneath the slab, according to the study published in The Seismic Record.
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For a copy of the paper, visit The Seismic Record online.
“Revealing the Secrets of the Western Mediterranean: A Deep Earthquake and the Overturned Slab,” by Daoyuan Sun at the University of Science and Technology of China and Meghan S. Miller at Australian National University. Sun can be reached at sdy2014@ustc.edu.cn and Miller can be reached at meghan.miller@anu.edu.au.