The Balmuccia peridotite body in the Ivrea-Verbano Zone has been interpreted by geologists as a lense: an elongated outcrop of mantle rocks that is disconnected from the real mantle and brough to the surface by tectonics. Geophysical studies in the past have already stipulated that dense and seismically fast rocks, similar to the mantle, must be located at very shallow depth beneath the area (see Scarponi et al. 2020, 2021 for recent, larger scale studies). The most recent result on this question, based on targeted, active source seismic investigation, shows that the connection between the surface and the subsurface exists: the Balmuccia peridotite is the tip of the mantle-berg! For details, please read Ryberg et al. 2023 in GJI.
