Earth's crust is 'unzipping' beneath Italy — and that could explain most of the earthquakes in the region

The crust under Italy is "unzipping" and falling away into the mantle, new research finds.

This process is the driver of much of the seismic activity in the Apennine Mountains, the long chain of peaks that runs like a spine down the Italian peninsula. This area provides a unique look into the swan song of subduction, or the movement of a slab of oceanic crust under a neighboring chunk of continental crust, said study lead author Stefano Tavani, a geoscientist at the University of Florence.

"We are experiencing the very, very late-stage to the subduction, and the tectonics is driven by a different engine, which is this unzipping," Tavani told Live Science.

The Mediterranean region, between Africa and Eurasia, is a patchwork quilt of tectonic microplates and mountain ranges, making the geology of the region extremely intricate. The big-picture geology is driven by the fact that the African plate, to the south, has been pushing northward, squeezing the crust and driving the sinking of an ancient ocean, the Tethys, into the mantle beneath the Apennine Mountains. This process has been ongoing for about 50 million years.