Submitted by kittens0423 t3_11jhb4d in askscience
forams__galorams t1_jbc9f59 wrote
Reply to comment by tomtom5858 in What happens at the end of a subduction zone? When the entire plate subducts? by kittens0423
> Yep. If fossiliferous rocks are subducted, the fossils will be buried in the mantle until eventually, those fossils are somehow transformed beyond being recognizable as fossils (i.e. they're mixed enough, melted or not).
Your use of ‘eventually’ is kinda misleading here. Any fossiliferous rocks would be at the top of a subducting slab and so if they didn’t get scraped off onto the overriding plate they would already be sheared upon entering the mantle; not to mention right at the slab-mantle interface where it won’t be long at all before the heat finishes them off.
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