“It’s one of the biggest unsolved problems in plate tectonics,” Duarte says ... which stretches in an arc around the Pacific Ocean from the southern tip of South America to New Zealand ...

Abstract: Pacific Ocean crust west of southwest North America was formed by Cenozoic seafloor spreading between the large Pacific Plate and smaller microplates. The eastern limit of this seafloor, the ...

Subduction of oceanic lithosphere transports surface H2O into the mantle. Recent studies show that dense SiO2 in the form of stishovite, an abundant mineral in subducted oceanic crust at depths ...