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A tectonic plate 'lost' for 60M years is found hiding under the Pacific Ocean - Fox News
Oct 23, 2020 1 min, 8 secs

A tectonic plate "lost" for 60 million years under the Pacific Ocean has been reconstructed by scientists at the University of Houston.

"Volcanoes form at plate boundaries, and the more plates you have, the more volcanoes you have," the study's co-author, Jonny Wu, assistant professor of geology in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, said in a statement.

This image shows plate tectonic reconstruction of western North America 60 million years ago showing subduction of three key tectonic plates, Kula, Farallon and Resurrection.

(Credit: Spencer Fuston and Jonny Wu, University of Houston Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics).

At the time, there were two tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean, the Kula and the Farallon.

A 3D block diagram across North America showing a mantle tomography image reveals the Slab Unfolding method used to flatten the Farallon tectonic plate.

By doing this, Fuston and Wu were able to locate the lost Resurrection plate.

THE MASSIVE 2017 MEXICAN EARTHQUAKE SPLIT A TECTONIC PLATE IN TWO.

"We believe we have direct evidence that the Resurrection plate existed," the study's lead author, Spencer Fuston, added.

In 2018, researchers learned the 8.2 magnitude earthquake that brought devastation and 98 deaths to southern Mexico in September 2017 split the tectonic plate responsible for the quake in half.

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