Solving a planetary plateau puzzle

You wouldn't think a piece of the Earth's upper layer large enough to influence the rising of the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan Mountains would be easy to lose.

But until some University of Illinois researchers came along, the huge chunk of "lithosphere" – the rocky shell composed of the planet's crust and uppermost, solid portion of its mantle – that apparently broke off some 15 million years ago was missing, or at least unobserved in any empirical sense.

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• Board to evaluate Culver, his contract
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• Obituaries

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