Steep bending of continental lithosphere without its stretching or plate collision: an indication for lithospheric failure and phase transitions
✍ Scribed by Artyushkov
- Book ID
- 104463201
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1998
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 399 KB
- Volume
- 10
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0954-4879
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✦ Synopsis
The Black Sea and Peri‐Caspian basin include steep slopes which are 4–10 km high and only 20–30 km wide. They formed without extension‐related normal faulting beneath the slopes and convergence in the adjacent regions. In the Peri‐Caspian basin a steep bending of the lithosphere was associated with rapid crustal subsidence which evolved over a few million years. The large intensity and high rate of the deformations indicate a temporary loss of high rigidity in the lithospheric layer which occurred independently of plate‐boundary‐related processes. The origin of this phenomenon presents a special problem. A tentative explanation is that a lithospheric failure in cool intraplate regions can result from infiltration of volatiles from the asthenosphere and rapid metamorphism in mafic rocks in the lower crust.