The new complex is unusual because it was created by a rare kind of fault, said study leader Fabrizio Pepe, a geophysicist at the University of Palermo, in Italy.
Making matters more complex is a small chunk of crust called the Adriatic-Ionian microplate, which broke off of the African Plate more than 65 million years ago and is now being pushed under the larger Eurasian Plate in a process called subduction.
Previously, scientists discovered a series of undersea volcanic arcs created by this tectonic unrest, starting near the Sardinian coast, with increasingly younger arcs southward and eastward.
These arcs were like an arrow pointing ever farther eastward, prompting Pepe and his colleagues to search for an even younger arc about 9 miles off the coast of Calabria, called the "Toe" of the "Boot" of Italy.
Those fractures are what allowed magma to rise to the surface at the Diamonte-Enotrio-Ovidio complex, creating an undersea landscape of lava flows and mountainous volcanoes.
The volcanic complex is inactive, but there are small intrusions of lava in some parts of the seafloor there, the researchers reported July 6 in the journal Tectonics.
The researchers are working to build a volcanic risk map of the complex to better understand if it could endanger human life or property.
https://www.livescience.com/new-undersea-volcanoes-weird-fault.html
Making matters more complex is a small chunk of crust called the Adriatic-Ionian microplate, which broke off of the African Plate more than 65 million years ago and is now being pushed under the larger Eurasian Plate in a process called subduction.
Previously, scientists discovered a series of undersea volcanic arcs created by this tectonic unrest, starting near the Sardinian coast, with increasingly younger arcs southward and eastward.
These arcs were like an arrow pointing ever farther eastward, prompting Pepe and his colleagues to search for an even younger arc about 9 miles off the coast of Calabria, called the "Toe" of the "Boot" of Italy.
Those fractures are what allowed magma to rise to the surface at the Diamonte-Enotrio-Ovidio complex, creating an undersea landscape of lava flows and mountainous volcanoes.
The volcanic complex is inactive, but there are small intrusions of lava in some parts of the seafloor there, the researchers reported July 6 in the journal Tectonics.
The researchers are working to build a volcanic risk map of the complex to better understand if it could endanger human life or property.
https://www.livescience.com/new-undersea-volcanoes-weird-fault.html
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