A tornonic plate "peeled" could "shrink" the Atlantic, according to scientists

A tectonic plate that seems to "take off" on the seabed off the Portuguese coast could one day "shrink" the Atlantic Ocean, scientists said.

Joao Duarte, a scientist at the Instituto Dom Luiz of the University of Lisbon, told Fox News that the plaque stood out in an area about 155 km south of Cape St. Vincent, Portugal. Duarte said that this process of "peeling" was unknown in oceanic plates, adding that it had only been identified under the continents.

According to the marine geologist, the area where the activity takes place is a relatively flat part of the seabed called Horseshoe Abyss Plain. "A little more technically, it is located near the Azores-Gibraltar plate boundary, which marks the border between two major tectonic plates: Africa and Eurasia," he explained.

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Duarte is the principal author of a recent research study presented at the meeting of the European Geoscience Union in Vienna, Austria.

In their research, scientists point to an earthquake off the coast of Portugal in 1755, which destroyed the city of Lisbon, and a magnitude 7.9 earthquake that hit the Portuguese capital in 1969. Duarte describes the newly created structure. in the tectonic plate as "a very good candidate" for the source of these events.

"The top 20 kilometers [12.4 miles] the plate is made of soft soft rocks and the bottom is dense and heavy (because the plate is very old, more than 100 million years old), "Duarte told Fox News. "This makes this lower part come off the top and sinks into the mantle under the effect of gravity," he added, pointing out that the process is facilitated by the fact that it is easier to use. water infiltration that softens the upper part of the plate.

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Duarte says that the structure of the tectonic plate and the process that provoked it can correspond to the initiation of a new "subduction zone" – the process by which one tectonic plate plunges beneath another.

"We know that there are margins of continents that do not have subduction zones, such as the margins of the Atlantic, and some continental margins that have subduction zones, such as the margins of the Pacific (the circle of fire), "he explained. "But we do not yet understand very well how they are formed."

Duarte continued: "This situation could be a rare example in which a subduction zone has just begun, and for that to happen, one of the plates must start slowly to take off, which we see (both in our observations / imagery and with certain computer models with which we managed to reproduce the process). "

With regard to a "shrinking" Atlantic Ocean, Duarte noted that the oceans are "born", then expanded, before closing to form a new supercontinent, in what is called the supercontinental cycle. The Atlantic, for example, was formed as a result of the disintegration of the supercontinent Pangea, and then "expanded" into its present form.

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"It makes sense that a new supercontinent is forming in the future as a result of the closure of the Atlantic," added Duarte. According to estimates, the new supercontinent, Pangea Proxima, will form in about 200 million years.

"But for this to happen, new subduction zones must form in the margins of the Atlantic," he said. "What we are witnessing perhaps is the birth of a new subduction zone that could spread all over the Atlantic, eventually leading to its closure.

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