section_path: Driving forces of plate motion/Driving forces related to mantle dynamics/Plume tectonics
section_name: Plume tectonics
paragraph_text: Plume tectonics
  
  In the theory of plume tectonics followed by numerous researchers during the 1990s, a modified concept of mantle convection currents is used. It asserts that super plumes rise from the deeper mantle and are the drivers or substitutes of the major convection cells. These ideas find their roots in the early 1930s in the works of Beloussov and van Bemmelen, which were initially opposed to plate tectonics and placed the mechanism in a fixed frame of vertical movements. Van Bemmelen later modified the concept in his "Undation Models" and used "Mantle Blisters" as the driving force for horizontal movements, invoking gravitational forces away from the regional crustal doming.
  
  The theories find resonance in the modern theories which envisage hot spots or mantle plumes which remain fixed and are overridden by oceanic and continental lithosphere plates over time and leave their traces in the geological record (though these phenomena are not invoked as real driving mechanisms, but rather as modulators).
  
  The mechanism is still advocated to explain the break-up of supercontinents during specific geological epochs. It has followers amongst the scientists involved in the theory of Earth expansion.