Hans Thybo is Professor at Zhejiang Deep-time Digital Earth International Research Center at Zhejiang Lab, Hangzhou, China. After holding a professorship for 31 years at University of Copenhagen, where he built geophysics as a discipline, he has been affiliated with University of Oslo, Istanbul Technical University, China University of Geosciences Wuhan, and latest for four years the SinoProbe Laboratory at China Academy of Geological Sciences.
He is elected member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences, where he served as vice-president, Academia Europaea (the European Academy); CORE International Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Hong Kong; Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters; and Danish Academy of Natural Sciences, where he is a board member. He is a fellow of Geological Society of America and Royal Astronomical Society, London. He received the 1000 Talents Award and the Friendship Award from the Chinese Government. He is Honorary Editor of Tectonophysics and Editor-in-Chief of EPSL. He was a cofounder of European Geosciences Union, where he has served as Division President, General Secretary and President. Thybo is currently President of the International Lithosphere Program (ILP).
His research interests are mainly in seismology and processes related to plate tectonics and geodynamics. He was a member of the team that first identified structure from >1.7 Ga plate tectonics. He discovered the Mid Lithospheric Discontinuity and identified a new role of magmatism in rifting and basin formation. He has been initiator of more than 60 large scale international collaborative geoscientific projects.
Uplift of Continental Plateaux by Eclogitization, Underplating and Crustal Melting
H. Thybo1, ZP Zhou2, GC Wang3 and I. Artemieva1
1Zhejiang Deep-time Digital Earth International Research Center, Hangzhou, China
2China Earthquake Administration, Beijing, China
3Yangtze University, Wuhan, China
The processes causing uplift of the world’s highest continental plateaux in Tibet, Andes and East Anatolia are enigmatic. A number of tectonomagmatic processes are proposed, and it is generally believed that the crustal structure is the key to explaining their high topography. We show that the whole continental crust has low seismic velocity (<6.7 km/s) in the central Lhasa terrane of Tibet, which indicates that this thickest crust on Earth is felsic down to the Moho at 80 km depth. The existence of such overthickened crust leads to metamorphic transformation of arc-related mafic lower crust immediately after formation with subsequent delamination. This leaves behind only the felsic part for crustal growth, which has contributed significantly to the rise of the Tibetan Plateau1.
Based on our new receiver function profile from the East Anatolian Plateau into the Arabian Shield, integrated with results from seismic tomography, MT and geochemical studies, we demonstrate the presence of an up-to 20 km thick underplated layer and a 10 km thick intra-crustal partially molten layer. The low density of these layers explains isostatically the high topography in eastern Anatolia2. The thicker crust in Tibet and the Andes show similar characteristics, and by a comparative study we show that the high topography of all three plateaux can be explained by isostatic uplift due the low density of these partially molten layers.
- Wang, G., Thybo, H. & Artemieva, I. M. No mafic layer in 80 km thick Tibetan crust. Nature Communications 12, 1069 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21420-z
- Zhou, Z., Thybo, H., Artemieva, I. M., Kusky, T. & Tang, C. C. Crustal melting and continent uplift by mafic underplating at convergent boundaries. Nat Commun 15, 9039 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-53435-7