Decoding the "ghost" stream lurking beneath the Middle East

An unusual magma column discovered beneath Oman may have altered the course of the Indian tectonic plate 25 million to 40 million years ago.

The team discovered an ancient “ghost” column lurking beneath Oman. The magma column is trapped beneath a thick part of the Earth’s crust and the upper mantle, the middle layer of the planet. As a result, the material cannot rise to trigger volcanic activity on the surface. Photo: Mark Daffey via Alamy.

Researchers don’t yet know whether the magma plume ever caused eruptions, but evidence suggests it altered the trajectory of the Indian tectonic plate as it collided with Eurasia tens of millions of years ago. Image: Pilia et al. 2025. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Redistributed under the terms of Creative Commons.

The magma plume, located beneath Oman’s Salma Plateau (also spelled Salmah and Selma), is up to 2,000 meters high, said study lead author Simone Pilia, a geophysicist and associate professor at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia. Photo: Beata Whitehead/Moment/Getty Images.

The Salma Plateau may have formed as a result of a magma column, although some scientists link the formation of the plateau to the bending of the Earth's crust caused by the Makran subduction zone off the coast of Pakistan and Iran. Photo: Pilia et al., EPSL, 2025.

“A plume is hot material that wants to rise. So it stays underneath and pushes up, creating the terrain. The plume on the Salma Plateau is quite small, but it’s there. It shows that the plume is active,” said Associate Professor Pilia. Photo: L_B Photography.

The researchers discovered the plume thanks to seismic waves, or sound waves, which travel through the Earth at different speeds depending on the chemical composition of the material. Oman has a dense network of seismic recording stations, making the study possible. Associate Professor Pilia named the plume "Dani" after his son. Photo: Getty.

The Dani plume is the first clear evidence of an amagmatic “ghost” cloud – a term the study authors coined to describe a mantle cloud that is not volcanically active. Mantle clouds originate at the core-mantle boundary about 2,900 km (1,800 miles) below Earth’s surface. These clouds often fuel volcanic eruptions because they undergo a process called decompression melting as they rise through the mantle and crust. Image: Phys.

Many mantle plumes cause volcanic eruptions between oceanic plates, including in Hawaii, says Associate Professor Pilia. However, mantle plumes rarely cause eruptions within continental plates. They cannot rise or undergo decompression melting because continental plates have thicker crust and upper mantle than oceanic plates. Photo: Getty Images | Anton Petrus.

Experts have often assumed that the lack of volcanic activity from mantle plumes on continental plates means there are no mantle plumes beneath continental plates. The Dani plume is evidence that mantle plumes can exist without volcanic activity. “What we are convinced of is that there are many other ‘ghost’ plumes that we don’t know about,” said Associate Professor Pilia. Photo: Getty Images | Photo by David McNew.

The Salma Plateau is around 40 million years old, meaning the Dani plume is at least as old. This coincides with the collision between the Indian and Eurasian plates. Photo: Getty Images | Anton Petrus.

The collision occurred quite close to what is now Oman, before the two plates moved north to their current positions. Associate Professor Pilia and colleagues reconstructed the trajectory of the Indian plate and found that it shifted slightly between 40 million and 25 million years ago. Photo: Getty Images | Photo by David McNew.

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