That sinking feeling...

[Nik_SpeakerToCats]

North America is dripping from below, geoscientists discover
https://phys.org/news/2025-04-north-ame ... tists.html

quote:
Researchers have discovered that the underside of the North American continent is dripping away in blobs of rock—and that the remnants of a tectonic plate sinking in Earth's mantle may be the reason why.

A paper published in Nature Geoscience describes the phenomenon, which was discovered at The University of Texas at Austin. It's the first time that "cratonic thinning" may be captured in action.

"We made the observation that there could be something beneath the craton," said the study's lead author Junlin Hua, who conducted the research during a postdoctoral fellowship at UT's Jackson School of Geosciences. "Luckily, we also got the new idea about what drives this thinning."
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There's a lot more on link, and some sweet graphics...
Looks like the West Coast's mostly-subducted Farallon Plate is not going down without a fight...
Also, this report does not mention that said plate may have *several* splits, one strip's semi-independent wriggling probably causing the recent quake-swam near Petrolia (Cal) with progressively deeper temblors aligned to SE...

IIRC, one of the proposed explanations for apparently 'anomalous' height of Tibetan Plateau is that a subducted Pacific plate caused gross delamination of craton root, such that Tibet rose 'geologically rapidly'. Some-when, albeit distantly, *entire* US Mid-West may stand as tall as Denver. Beyond losing wheat-belt, this would have *interesting* effects on climate and drainage...