In a paper published in the journal Nature , geologists from the University of Houston demonstrate the reconstruction of the subduction of the Nazca Ocean plate, the remnants of which are currently found down to 1,500 kilometers, or about 900 miles, below the Earth’s surface.
Their results show that the formation of the Andean mountain range was more complicated than previous models suggested.
“The Andes Mountain formation has long been a paradigm of plate tectonics,” said Jonny Wu, assistant professor of geology at UH and a co-author of the paper.