A dipping, thick Farallon slab below central United States

Abstract:

It has been hypothesized that much of the Laramide orogeny was caused by dynamic effects induced by an extensive flat slab during a period of plateau subduction. A particularly thick block containing the Shatsky Rise conjugate, now in the mid-mantle, left a distinctive deformation footprint from southern California to Denver, Colorado. Thus mid-mantle, relic slabs can provide fundamental information about past subduction and the history of plate tectonics if properly imaged. Here we find clear evidence for a northeastward dipping (35° dip), slab-like, but fat (up to 400-500 km thick) seismic anomaly within the top of the lower mantle below the central United States. Using a deep focus earthquake below Spain with direct seismic paths that propagate along the top and bottom of the anomaly, we find that the observed, stacked seismic waveforms recorded with the dense USArray show multi-pathing indicative of sharp top and bottom surfaces. Plate tectonic reconstructions in which the slab is migrated back in time suggest strong coupling of the slab to North America. In combination with the reconstructions, we interpret the structure as arising from eastward dipping Farallon subduction at the western margin of North America during the Cretaceous, in contrast with recent interpretations. The slab could have been fattened through a combination of pure shear thickening during flat-slab subduction and a folding instability during penetration into the lower mantle.