Magnetotelluric imaging of a fossil oceanic plate in northwestern Xinjiang, China

Because an oceanic plate colliding with a continental plate will usually be subducted and recycled into the deep mantle, a fossil oceanic plate after the closure of an ancient ocean has rarely been imaged in the subcontinental lithospheric mantle. This has led to a long-standing debate about the fate of subducted ocean plates. The problem can be addressed by imaging the lithosphere in a continental accretion zone with past ocean subduction. We...