The Caribbean islands have been pushed east over the last 50
million years, driven by the movement of the Earth's viscous
mantle against the more rooted South American continent, reveals
new research by geophysicists from USC. The results, published
today in Nature Geoscience, give us a better understanding of
how continents resist the constant movement of the Earth's
plates – and what effect the continental plates have on
reshaping the surface of the Earth. "Studying the deep earth
interior provides insights into how the Earth has evolved into
its present form," said Meghan S. Miller, assistant professor of
earth sciences in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and
Sciences, and lead author of the paper. "We're interested in
plate tectonics, and the southeastern Caribbean is interesting
because it's right near a complex plate boundary." Miller and
Thorsten W. Becker, associate professor of earth sciences at USC
Dornsife College, studied the margin between the Caribbean plate
and the South American plate