Yellowstone Plume Drives Neogene North American Plate Motion Change

Plate motion changes provide powerful constrains on plate tectonic forces. North America is ideal to explore these forces. We use recently published high-temporal resolution plate reconstructions of North America, which reveal a velocity slow-down at urn:x-wiley:00948276:media:grl62973:grl62973-math-000117 Ma, roughly coeval with the eruption of the Yellowstone plume, together with a stratigraphic analysis of hiatus surfaces across the continent, which provides proxy information for paleotopography. Using a simple Couette/Poiseuille flow models we estimate asthenosphere flow beneath North America and its impact on Neogene plate motion. We find that North America's Neogene plate motion change can be explained by Poiseuille flow in the asthenosphere generated upon the arrival of the Yellowstone plume and that the flow length-scale matches the extent of hiatus surfaces. While plume driven upper mantle flow constitutes a geodynamically viable model to explain North America's Neogene plate motion change it provides an intrinsic link between vertical and horizontal plate motions.

@article{id2748,
  author = {Stotz, Ingo L. and Vilac{\'\i}s, Berta and Hayek, Jorge N.  and Bunge, Hans-Peter and Friedrich, Anke M.},
  doi = {10.1029/2021GL095079},
  eid = {e2021GL095079},
  journal = {Geophysical Research Letters},
  language = {en},
  number = {18},
  pages = {e2021GL095079},
  title = {Yellowstone Plume Drives Neogene North American  Plate Motion Change},
  volume = {48},
  year = {2021},
}

%O Journal Article
%A Stotz, Ingo L.
%A Vilacís, Berta
%A Hayek, Jorge N. 
%A Bunge, Hans-Peter
%A Friedrich, Anke M.
%R 10.1029/2021GL095079
%1 e2021GL095079
%J Geophysical Research Letters
%G en
%N 18
%P e2021GL095079
%T Yellowstone Plume Drives Neogene North American  Plate Motion Change
%V 48
%D 2021