Correspondence: Numerical modelling of the PERM anomaly and the Emeishan large igneous province

Large igneous provinces (LIPs) are the result of catastrophic melting in the upper mantle, and by reconstructing their positions over the past 300 Myr it has been shown that most LIPs—including the 260 Myrs old Emeishan LIP in South China—probably originated from plumes at the edges of two large low-velocity regions in the lowermost mantle. In a recent article published in Nature Communications , Flament et al. 1 presented a remarkable new view on the origin of the Emeishan LIP (based on numerical modelling) and we discuss here why we do not agree with their interpretation.