Credit: Suzanna van de Lagemaat, Utrecht University
The Pontus oceanic plate that was reconstructed by Suzanna van de Lagemaat: its location in the paleo-Pacific ocean 120 million years ago, and its present relicts. An earlier study showed that a large subduction zone must have run through the western paleo-Pacific Ocean, which separated the known Pacific plates in the east from a hypothetical Pontus plate in the west. This hypothesis has now been independently demonstrated by Van de Lagemaat’s research.