![\"According](\"https:\/\/siliconeer.com\/current\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/PAGE-SCIENCE-INDIA-EURASIA-EARTH-02-INSIDE.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
They then developed a model for a double subduction system, and determined that India’s ancient drift velocity could have depended on two factors within the system: the width of the subducting plates, and the distance between them.<\/p>\n
If the plates are relatively narrow and far apart, they would likely cause India to drift at a faster rate, researchers said.<\/p>\n
The group incorporated the measurements they obtained from the Himalayas into their new model, and found that a double subduction system may indeed have driven India to drift at high speed toward Eurasia some 80 million years ago.<\/p>\n
“In Earth science, it’s hard to be completely sure of anything,” said Leigh Royden, a professor of geology and geophysics in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences.<\/p>\n
“But there are so many pieces of evidence that all fit together here that we’re pretty convinced,” said Royden.<\/p>\n
Based on the geologic record, India’s migration appears to have started about 120 million years ago, when Gondwana began to break apart.<\/p>\n
“When you look at simulations of Gondwana breaking up, the plates kind of start to move, and then India comes slowly off of Antarctica, and suddenly it just zooms across – it’s very dramatic,” Royden said.<\/p>\n
Based on the geologic record, India’s migration appears to have started about 120 million years ago, when Gondwana began to break apart.<\/p>\n
India was sent adrift across what was then the Tethys Ocean – an immense body of water that separated Gondwana from Eurasia.<\/p>\n
In 2013, the team, along with 30 students, trekked through the Himalayas, where they collected rocks and took paleomagnetic measurements to determine where the rocks originally formed.<\/p>\n
From the data, the researchers determined that about 80 million years ago, an arc of volcanoes formed near the equator, which was then in the middle of the Tethys Ocean.<\/p>\n
A volcanic arc is typically a sign of a subduction zone, and the group identified a second volcanic arc south of the first, near where India first began to break away from Gondwana.<\/p>\n
The data suggested that there may have been two subducting plates: a northern oceanic plate, and a southern tectonic plate that carried India.<\/p>\n
The research was published in the journal Nature Geoscience<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Did you know India was not a part of Asia originally? India set a continental speed record as it crashed into Eurasia 80 million years ago due to a double subduction, a new MIT study has found. A PTI report. In the history of continental drift, India has been a mysterious record-holder, researchers said. More…<\/p>\n