500-KM Oceanic Canyon Traced to a Tectonic Zipper, Not Erosion
Scientists mapped the King’s Trough, a 500+ km underwater canyon in the North Atlantic, and determined it formed over millions of years by the slow separation of the European and African plates via a tectonic 'zipper,' aided by unusually thick, hot crust from the Azores mantle plume. The finding, reported after METEOR expedition data and high‑resolution sonar, links deep mantle processes to surface tectonics and reshapes how we think about underwater canyon formation.