Philippine Sea

History

The past. At the ice age peak the sea stood more than 120 metres lower: Taiwan was joined to the mainland and Palau’s main islands were one island almost five times their size, yet the new land came to less than a third of one percent of this deep ocean plate, and the rising sea took most of it back between about 16,600 and 8,300 years ago. No sea ice reached these warm waters, and on land small glaciers sat on Taiwan’s highest ridges, the last of them about 9,500 years ago. Out in the open sea, giant diatoms fed by Asian dust bloomed for some 10,000 years and laid mats of their shells on the floor of the Parece Vela Basin until about 19,600 years ago.

55 million years ago

The West Philippine Basin began to open behind a volcanic arc, making much of this plate's ocean floor.

52 million years ago

The Pacific plate began to sink beneath this plate's eastern edge, starting the Izu-Bonin-Mariana arc.

30 million years ago

The volcanic arc split, and back-arc spreading opened the Parece Vela and Shikoku basins.

Sources: Lambeck et al. 2014, PNAS 111:15296; Chang et al. 2015, Nature Communications 6:6037; Paul et al. 2021, Climate of the Past 17:805; Hebenstreit et al. 2025, Journal of Quaternary Science 40:831; Hebenstreit 2012, PhD thesis, Freie Universität Berlin; Xiong et al. 2015, Paleoceanography 30:803 · Deschamps and Lallemand 2002, Journal of Geophysical Research 107:2322 · Shervais et al. 2019, Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 20:314 · Crameri et al. 2020, Nature Communications 11:3750 · Taylor 1992, Proceedings ODP Scientific Results 126:627-651 · Ishizuka et al. 2011, Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems 12