Earth’s Mantle Has Extra Layer Of Tectonic Plates, 3D Mapping Reveals

Scientists have discovered an extra layer of tectonic plates in the Earth’s mantle. The newly detected tectonic plates have been found in East Asia and could help in explaining mysterious earthquakes between Fiji and Australia.

A new imaging technique, which uses earthquake data to help scientists visualize the inner structure of the Earth, was used to discover multiple tectonic plates that were subducted 50 to 60 million years ago into the mantle. Incidentally, the Earth's mantle is a 3,000 km (1,864 miles) layer of solid rock that moves like a really thick liquid under the crust. The crust moves along when the mantle moves and that is what causes tectonic plates to shift around.

According to Science Alert, a huge slab of ancient Earth has been imaged under Tonga that is expected to travel almost as fast as the tectonic plates at the surface. Tonga is a tiny island in the Pacific beneath which a majority of the world’s deep earthquakes occur.

"Basically, 90 percent of Earth's deep seismicity (more than 500 km deep) occurs at the Tonga area where we have found our long, flat slab," geologist Jonny Wu of the University of Houston told The Guardian.

The discovery of the tectonic plates could answer many important geological questions, such as what has been causing the Vityaz earthquakes -- the violent, deep earthquakes that have been traced to the mantle between Fiji and Australia. According to the research team, plates sliding in the mantle can lead to deeper earthquakes similar to the process when plates' sliding in the crust causes regular earthquakes.

It should be noted that the research is only preliminary at this point and has not been peer-reviewed. However, according to the scientists, the discovery shows that Earth is hiding a whole lot -- quite a bit of which lurks beneath the surface.