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Bends in volcanic hotspot lineaments, best represented by the large elbow in the Hawaiian-Emperor chain, were thought to directly record changes in plate motion. Several lines of geophysical inquiry now suggest that a change in the locus of upwelling in the mantle induced by mantle dynamics causes bends in hotspot tracks. Inverse modeling suggests that although deep flow near the core-mantle boundary may have played a role in the Hawaiian-Emperor bend, capture of a plume by a ridge, followed by changes in sub-Pacific mantle flow, can better explain the observations. Thus, hotspot tracks can reveal patterns of past mantle circulation.
Tarduno et al. (Thu,) studied this question.