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Originally published in Science Express on 24 July 2003
Science 22 August 2003:
Vol. 301. no. 5636, pp. 1064 - 1069
DOI: 10.1126/science.1086442
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Research Articles

The Emperor Seamounts: Southward Motion of the Hawaiian Hotspot Plume in Earth's Mantle

John A. Tarduno,1* Robert A. Duncan,2 David W. Scholl,3 Rory D. Cottrell,1 Bernhard Steinberger,4 Thorvaldur Thordarson,5 Bryan C. Kerr,3 Clive R. Neal,6 Fred A. Frey,7 Masayuki Torii,8 Claire Carvallo9

The Hawaiian-Emperor hotspot track has a prominent bend, which has served as the basis for the theory that the Hawaiian hotspot, fixed in the deep mantle, traced a change in plate motion. However, paleomagnetic and radiometric age data from samples recovered by ocean drilling define an age-progressive paleolatitude history, indicating that the Emperor Seamount trend was principally formed by the rapid motion (over 40 millimeters per year) of the Hawaiian hotspot plume during Late Cretaceous to early-Tertiary times (81 to 47 million years ago). Evidence for motion of the Hawaiian plume affects models of mantle convection and plate tectonics, changing our understanding of terrestrial dynamics.

1 Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627, USA.
2 College of Oceanic and Atmosphere Science, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331–5503, USA.
3 Geophysics Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
4 Institute for Frontier Research on Earth Evolution, Japan Marine Science and Technology Center, Yokosuka 237–0061, Japan.
5 Department of Geology and Geophysics–School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.
6 Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA.
7 Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
8 Department of Biosphere-Geosphere System Science, Okayama University of Science, Okayama 700–0005, Japan.
9 Department of Physics, Geophysics Division, University of Toronto, Mississauga, ON L5L1C6 Canada.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: john{at}earth.rochester.edu

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