Burying Earth's Primitive Mantle in the Slab Graveyard

What have the Earths' Mantle & an Egyptian Mummy in Common?

This paper will start with an overview of the Manchester Visualization Centre (MVC), what we do, why we do it and who we do it to. The main elements of the paper will be to present four examples of our work: Visualization of Egyptian Mummy 1766, one of the Egyptian mummies belonging to the University Museum. We will explain what we did with the CT scan of this mummy, the special techniques that...

Effects of change in slab geometry on the mantle flow and slab fabric in Southern Peru

The effects of complex slab geometries on the surrounding mantle flow field are still poorly understood. Here we combine shear wave velocity structure with Rayleigh wave phase anisotropy to examine these effects in southern Peru, where the slab changes its geometry from steep to flat. To the south, where the slab subducts steeply, we find trench-parallel anisotropy beneath the active volcanic a...

Oceanic slab melting and mantle metasomatism.

Modern plate tectonic brings down oceanic crust along subduction zones where it either dehydrates or melts. Those hydrous fluids or melts migrate into the overlying mantle wedge trigerring its melting which produces arc magmas and thus additional continental crust. Nowadays, melting seems to be restricted to cases of young (< 50 Ma) subducted plates. Slab melts are silicic and strongly sodic (t...

Slab dehydration in the Earth's mantle transition zone

Because of the high water solubility in wadsleyite and ringwoodite, the mantle transition zone is possibly a large water reservoir. The potentially high water content of the Earth's mantle transition zone is a key element of several global mantle dynamic models. Nevertheless, to keep the transition zone relatively wet, the tendency for convection to distribute water over the entire mantle has t...

Preface: Deep Slab and Mantle Dynamics