Pacific plate's rotation gave Alaska's Aleutian Islands a later-life lift

New research by Brown University geologists confirms that the Aleutian Islands, the archipelago stretching from Alaska to Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, experienced a massive geological uplift between 5 million and 7 million years ago. The researchers conclude that the uplift—a rising of the Earth's crust that pushed the islands upward and transformed their topography—was driven by an ancient rotation of the Pacific tectonic plate, which subducts beneath the North American plate near the Alaska Peninsula and the North Pacific.