Sharp Sides to the African Superplume

Beneath southern Africa is a large structure about 1200 kilometers across and extending obliquely 1500 kilometers upward from the core-mantle boundary with a shear velocity reduction of about 3%. Using a fortuitous set of SKS phases that travel along its eastern side, we show that the boundary of the anomaly appears to be sharp, with a width less than 50 kilometers, and is tilted outward from its center. Dynamic models that fit the seismic constraints have a dense chemical layer within an upwardly flowing thermal structure. The tilt suggests that the layer is dynamically unstable on geological time scales.