Rapid erosion of the Southern African Plateau as it climbs over a mantle superswell
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract We present new sedimentary flux data confirming that a large pulse of erosion affected the Southern African Plateau in the Late Cretaceous and is likely to be related to a major uplift episode of the plateau. This short phase of erosion (i.e., less than 30 Myr in duration) has commonly been difficult to reconcile with a mantle origin for the plateau anomalous uplift: given its size, the rise of the African superplume is likely to have lasted much longer. Here we demonstrate by using a simple model for fluvial erosion that tilting of the continent as it rides over a wide dynamic topography high cannot only cause rapid uplift of the plateau but also trigger continent‐wide drainage reorganization, leading to substantial denudation in a relatively short amount of time. The amplitude and short duration of the sedimentary pulse are best reproduced by assuming a strong erodibility contrast between the Karoo sedimentary and volcanic rocks and the underlying basement. We also present a new compilation of paleoclimate indicators that shows a transition from arid to very humid conditions approximately at the onset of the documented erosional pulse, suggesting that climate may have also played a role in triggering the denudation. The diachronism of the sedimentary flux between the eastern and western margins of the plateau and the temporal and geographic coincidence between the uplift and kimberlite eruptions are, however, better explained by our tilt hypothesis driven by the migration of the continent over a fixed source of mantle upwelling.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".