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Science 8 November 2002:
Vol. 298. no. 5596, pp. 1219 - 1221
DOI: 10.1126/science.1078115
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Reports

Seismic Images of Crust and Upper Mantle Beneath Tibet: Evidence for Eurasian Plate Subduction

R. Kind,12* X. Yuan,1 J. Saul,1 D. Nelson,3dagger S. V. Sobolev,14 J. Mechie,1 W. Zhao,5 G. Kosarev,4 J. Ni,6 U. Achauer,7 M. Jiang5

Seismic data from central Tibet have been combined to image the subsurface structure and understand the evolution of the collision of India and Eurasia. The 410- and 660-kilometer mantle discontinuities are sharply defined, implying a lack of a subducting slab beneath the plateau. The discontinuities appear slightly deeper beneath northern Tibet, implying that the average temperature of the mantle above the transition zone is about 300°C hotter in the north than in the south. There is a prominent south-dipping converter in the uppermost mantle beneath northern Tibet that might represent the top of the Eurasian mantle lithosphere underthrusting the northern margin of the plateau.

1 GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam, Telegrafenberg, 14473 Potsdam, Germany.
2 Freie Universität Berlin, 12249 Berlin, Germany.
3 Department of Earth Sciences, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA.
4 Institute of the Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Sciences, B. Gruzinskaya 10, 128810 Moscow, Russia.
5 Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, 26 Baiwanzhang Road, Beijing 100037, China.
6 Department of Physics, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM 88003, USA.
7 École et Observatoire des Sciences de la Terre, Universite Louis Pasteur, 5 rue René Descartes, F-67084 Strasbourg Cedex, France.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: kind{at}gfz-potsdam.de

dagger    Deceased (18 August 2002).

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