NASA Scientist Reveals Greenland's Geologic Past

We tend to think of Earth's landmasses as being fixed in place, but in reality they are attached to moving tectonic plates that constantly jostle for position. In some areas these tectonic plates slide over a hotspot – an upwelling of magma from deep in the mantle that can leave behind a geologic "scar" in the crust. Now, a NASA scientist and her colleagues have used anomalies in Greenland's crustal magnetic field to derive its geothermal heat flux, allowing them to effectively peer beneath Greenland's thick ice sheet and into the crust itself. What they found was a thermal track in Greenland's bedrock that records the motions of the North American tectonic plate over geologic time. This finding helps scientists to better understand the movement of Greenland, as it was slowly pushed over the hotspot that is now located under neighboring Iceland. It also serves as a reminder that nothing stands still over geologic time, and that even the largest landmasses are constantly being reshaped by our dynamic planet.