Earth's surface is not made up of a single sheet of rock that forms a crust but rather a number of "tectonic plates" that fit closely, like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle.

Chen said that warmer ocean waters may have triggered the melting by seeping under the ice sheet and making it slide more easily over the rock it rests on.

The gneissic granite intruded the country rock of Taihua Group as sheet is not mixed granite but magmatic granite, its lithology is simple relatively.