Scientists have recovered the longest and most complete core of mantle rocks ever sampled from the ocean floor.
The mantle forms a 2,900km layer beneath the Earth's crust which is not normally accessible from the surface. To counter that, the nearly continuous 1,268-metre core was drilled at a "tectonic window," a section of the seabed where rocks from the deep mantle are uplifted and exposed along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
It is hoped these samples from deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean will help unravel the mantle's role in the origins of life on Earth, the volcanic formation of Earth's crust, and its contribution to global cycles of chemicals including carbon and hydrogen.
The samples were collected by an international team of scientists in the Spring of 2023, during Expedition 399 (Building Blocks of Life, Atlantis Massif) of the International Ocean Discovery Program. The international marine research consortium of more than 20 countries retrieves cores - cylindrical samples of sediment and rock - from the ocean floor.
Since the conclusion of the expedition aboard the ocean drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution, the team of more than 30 scientists - including Dr Andrew Parsons, from the University of Plymouth - has been compiling an inventory of the recovered mantle rocks to understand their composition, structure and context.
Their initial findings, presented in the journal Science, reveal that the rocks' record of mantle melting, which provides the source of volcanism at the seafloor, is more extensive than expected.
Dr Parsons, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Marine Geoscience and recently appointed Lecturer, joined the nine-week expedition as part of his ongoing work to investigate the processes that facilitate and control the tectonic evolution of Earth.
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