The eruptions of some mid-ocean volcanoes may be the echoes of supercontinent breakups that persisted for tens of millions of years after the rearrangement of Earth's surface, a new study suggests.
The new research hints that long after continents rift apart, instabilities in the mantle created by the breakups continue to eat away at the bases of continents, peeling off crust and feeding ocean volcanoes with unusual magma.
