New paper argues history, not mantle plume, powers Yellowstone

• 01The Farallon plate, now largely subducted beneath North America, helped build the West Coast by slamming island chains into the continent as it disappeared.
• 02A new paper published in Science proposes that the vanishing Farallon plate created stresses that opened paths for molten rock to reach the surface at the Yellowstone hotspot.
• 03The Yellowstone hotspot has periodically blanketed much of the continent with ash.
• 04The paper's model identifies a translithospheric magma plumbing system (TLMPS) with two separate arms originating from the crust-mantle boundary: one sloping northeast to the Yellowstone caldera and another branching toward the Snake River Plain.
• 05Remains of the Farallon plate, still sinking through the mantle east of Yellowstone, drive eastward mantle flow that encounters thicker, older North American crust, causing the flow to dip downward and creating compressive stresses.
• 06The model indicates these stresses could open conduits for mantle material to reach the surface on either side of the volcano-free gap between the Snake River Plain and Yellowstone, without requiring a mantle plume.
• 07The Yellowstone and Snake River Plain volcanic features produce different types of volcanism—explosive caldera-forming eruptions versus massive lava floods—which the model explains through different residence times of mantle material in different crustal pathways.
• 08The model does not explain the historical record of eruptions across the Snake River Plain or why similar features developed only at Yellowstone when Farallon plate fragments are subducting under most of western North America.

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Researchers published a new geophysical model suggesting that stresses created by the subducting Farallon plate remnants, rather than a traditional mantle plume, power the Yellowstone hotspot and its associated volcanism. The model proposes that mantle material flows eastward from the sinking plate fragments until encountering thicker, older continental crust east of Yellowstone, where the change in flow direction creates compressive stresses that open pathways for molten material to reach the surface. The model accounts for why Yellowstone and the Snake River Plain exhibit different volcanic styles but leaves open questions about why these features formed only at Yellowstone despite widespread Farallon plate subduction across western North America.