Jonathan Lewis and colleagues have published findings on Taiwan research in the journal Progress in Earth and Planetary Science. The article is open-access and available to all without going through a paywall.
Taiwan is one of the few growing mountain belts in the world where rocks that once experienced high-pressure metamorphism (> 50 km burial) are exposed at Earth’s surface. Jon Lewis (Anthropology, Geospatial and Earth Sciences) and his collaborators propose a two-stage process starting ca. 6 million years ago to account for the exhumation of the rocks of the eastern Central Range. They integrate structural, geochronological, and fluid inclusion data to argue that lateral tectonic flow and structural thinning played a critical role in exhuming the metamorphic rocks of the mountain belt until very recently, ca. 700 thousand years ago.
This work was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation to Lewis and a separate award to lead author Tim Byrne. Substantial contributions to the fieldwork came from IUP undergraduate students Lindsey Aman Cromwell, Lauren Donati, Ross Bollesta, and Susie Adams. Analytical contributions were made on campus by undergraduate students Amy Clegg, Morgan Spatz, and Bennett Falvo. All of these students shared their findings at conferences including the American Geophysical Union Fall meetings and annual meetings of the Geological Society of America and Japan Geoscience Union.
