Geologists discover previously unknown region of the Earth’s mantle

The Bermuda Islands - a very special terrain in the middle of the western Atlantic Ocean, not only for its white beaches, but also because the archipelago is at the top of a 4,570-metre high volcano that died out about 30 million years ago. An international team of researchers has now taken a closer look at this geological peculiarity and geochemically examined the magma rock under Bermuda for the first time. The aim of the researchers was to draw conclusions about the inner composition of the Earth. The result: The geologists discovered a yet unknown region of the Earth's mantle - the shell of the Earth's interior, which begins under the outermost crust of the Earth and descends 2,900 metres into the Earth's interior. The newly discovered region is characterised by a special atomic composition of lead, which is formed by radioactive decay, as well as carbon, water and other volatile substances. "Our study shows that our understanding of the composition of the Earth's mantle is still incomplete - although we have been studying it for almost a century," explains Dr. Sarah Mazza of the Institute for Planetology at the University of Münster, one of the two lead authors of the study. The study was published in the scientific journal "Nature".