This process is the driver of much of the seismic activity in the Apennine Mountains, the long chain of peaks that runs like a spine down the Italian peninsula. This area provides a unique look into the swan song of subduction, or the movement of a slab of oceanic crust under a neighboring chunk of continental crust, said study lead author Stefano Tavani, a geoscientist at the University of Florence.
The Mediterranean region, between Africa and Eurasia, is a patchwork quilt of tectonic microplates and mountain ranges, making the geology of the region extremely intricate. The big-picture geology is driven by the fact that the African plate, to the south, has been pushing northward, squeezing the crust and driving the sinking of an ancient ocean, the Tethys, into the mantle beneath the Apennine Mountains. This process has been ongoing for about 50 million years.
A complex mix of tectonic forces has built the Apennines and led to the formation of the two basins in the Mediterranean that lie east and west of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. (Image credit: 1xpert via Getty Images with labels added)Related stories
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There are other places around the world where similar processes are happening, such as in the Hellenic trench south of Greece, Tavani said. The findings "could be applied to other several systems," he said, "because in the end, it is a kind of very late-stage plate tectonics."
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