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The rent between South America and Africa 135 million years ago was a impassioned affaire , unexampled research finds .
The continental breakup cat over 3.8 million three-dimensional miles ( 16 million three-dimensional kilometers ) of magma that still persist as volcanic rocks in South America , in Africa , and on the seafloor of the Atlantic Ocean . In some places in Namibia and Angola , these volcanic rock layers are up to 0.6 geographical mile ( 1 kilometre ) thick .
New research sheds light on how Pangaea broke apart 135 million years ago.
The new study — which combines multiple generator of previously collected data from South America , Africa and the sea floor — finds that the main magma outbreak hap between 135 million and 131 million years ago , with a peak around 134.5 million years ago . This meliorate agreement of the outbreak timing could give researcher a better idea of what triggered the breakup as well as its shock on the climate .
" We get some extinctions and also some disturbance on the mood " around 134.5 million years ago , allege study leading authorMohamed Mansour Abdelmalak , a geologist and geophysicist at the University of Oslo in Norway . experience the precise age of the magma helps tie the eruptions to these result .
The Modern inquiry also finds grounds of a " thermal anomaly " beneath what was then southernPangaea , the supercontinent that start out snap off up 200 million years ago into the continents present today . This breakup was dull , with South America and Africa splitting 135 million year ago , and North American not complete its split with Europe until 55 million long time ago . Previous inquiry has suggested that the detachment of southern Pangaea happen , in part , because of what ’s known as a mantle plume — a rising chromatography column of superhot rock’n’roll from Earth ’s middle layer , the pall . These plumes dissolve and slim the continental crust from below .
The young research hints that the thermic unusual person that helped separate South America and Africa may have been because of that mantle plume , Abdelmalak order Live Science , but the guess is still controversial .
" We do n’t have many samples , so we do n’t have a go at it incisively if this volcanism is related to the drapery plume , " he state . Samples are peculiarly necessitate from the rock’n’roll that now sit under the deep ocean off the coast of Argentina and Uruguay , where very slight deep - sea boring has been done , he say .
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There is a modern - day example of a drape plume go to barrage of magma in Iceland , however , Abdelmalak said . There , the Mid - Atlantic Ridge — which is still pulling apart at a charge per unit of 0.8 to 2 inches ( 2 to 5 cm ) a year — is on land . This land has been formed by the Iceland hotspot , which studies suggest isdriven by a plumage reach deep into the mantle .
extra deep rock sample from Africa and the deep ocean could serve researcher understand how much magma erupted during the split between Africa and South America and how the eruptions affected the climate , Abdelmalak pronounce . In most large eruptions , the climate warms because volcanoes spew Brobdingnagian amounts of greenhouse gas . But there was a stop of cooling 134 million old age ago , which may have been because the magma that erupted break down , orweathered , quickly . In weathering , rock-and-roll break down and chemically react with the air , pull in carbon dioxide out of the atmospheric state .
The findings appear in the May issue of the journalEarth - scientific discipline reviews .
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