A new mega-earthquake hotspot could be forming beneath the Atlantic Mysterious earthquakes in the region have long gone unexplained

"A new tectonic fault could be emerging beneath the Atlantic Ocean, raising the risk of powerful earthquakes and tsunamis that could ripple across the basin.....Scientists have puzzled over why Portugal has suffered huge earthquakes despite lying far from the world’s major fault lines. Duarte’s team pieced together seismic records and computer models of the Horseshoe Abyssal Plain, a stretch of deep seafloor southwest of Portugal. They found evidence that the mantle – the hot, dense layer beneath Earth’s crust – is peeling away in a process called delamination. The findings suggest we may be witnessing the birth of a new subduction zone in the Atlantic – one that could eventually pull Africa, Europe and the Americas back together into a future supercontinent." SciNews