Valentine and Moores [Valentine JW, Moores EM (1970) Nature 228:657-659] hypothesized that plate tectonics regulates global biodiversity by changing the geographic arrangement of continental crust, but the data required to fully test the hypothesis were not available. Here, we use a global database of marine animal fossil occurrences and a paleogeographic reconstruction model to test the hypoth...

Findings of coesite and microdiamond in metamorphic rocks of supracrustal protolith led to the recognition of continental subduction to mantle depths. The crust-mantle interaction is expected to take place during subduction of the continental crust beneath the subcontinental lithospheric mantle wedge. This is recorded by postcollisional mafic igneous rocks in the Dabie-Sulu orogenic belt and it...

The most spectacular example of a plate convergence event on Earth is the motion of the Indian plate towards Eurasia at speeds in excess of 18 cmyr−1 (ref. 1), and the subsequent collision. Continental buoyancy usually stalls subduction shortly after collision, as is seen in most sections of the Alpine–Himalayan chain. However, in the Indian section of this chain, plate velocities were merely r...

one of the most intensive occurrences of magmatism in iran was in the middle jurassic period. among the granitoid intrusions in this period as discrete bodies or complexes can be pointed to aligoodarz, alvand, astaneh, boroujerd, malayer, and chah-dozdan in the sanandaj-sirjan zone; shir-kuh and ayrakan in the central iran zone; shah-kuh, sorkh-kuh and kalateh-ahani in the lut block. these gran...