Earth’s surface is constantly shifting, shaped by the slow but powerful movement of tectonic plates. While some plates have persisted for hundreds of millions of years, others have vanished, sinking ...

Over time, cooling-induced convection as well as partial melting ... returned to the mantle when the oceanic lithosphere sinks at subduction zones. The mantle can, rarely, be sampled directly ...

evidence suggests it is the plates that drive the convection. Slab pull occurs where older, denser tectonic plates sink into the mantle at subduction zones. As these older sections of plates sink ...

The Tonga Subduction Zone, characterized by the world ... illuminate the intricate dance between tectonic plates and mantle convection—a cornerstone of modern geoscience.