The upper mantle structure of the Tibetan Plateau and its implication for the continent-continent collision

The upper mantle structures of Himalayas-Tibet have been obtained from the migration of receiver functions of the teleseismic events recorded by INDEPTH-III. The result of migration imaging shows a dipping interface subducting northward from the depth of 100 km to the 410-km discontinuity underneath southern Tibet. It indicates that the lithospheric mantle of the Indian continent had been detached from the crust and deeply subducted to the upper mantle of Eurasia during the Indo-Eurasian collision. This kind of continent-continent collision process is fundamentally different from the oceanic collision.