This is one explanation for the existence of back-arc basins.

The cause of asymmetric spreading in back-arc basins remains poorly understood.

The existence of the back-arc basin complicates descriptive issues.

The Black Sea formed from two separate back-arc basins.

Back-arc basins were not predicted by plate tectonics theory, but they are consistent with this model for how the Earth loses heat.

The Tyrrhenian oceanized basin is regarded as the back-arc basin.

The turbidites are deposited in a back-arc basin behind a retreating subduction boundary.

A number of processes have been proposed to explain the formation of back-arc basins but no one mechanism seems to be applicable to all cases.

It is separated from the Australian Plate by a long divergent boundary which forms a back-arc basin.

Not all subduction zones have back-arc basins, some like the central Andes are associated with rear-arc compression.

Back-arc basins are typically very long (several hundreds to thousands of kilometers) and relatively narrow (a few hundred kilometers).

Similar to mid-ocean ridges, back-arc basins have hydrothermal vents and associated chemosynthetic communities.

Some convergent margins have zones of active seafloor spreading behind the island arc, known as back-arc basins.

Rocks of the former group bear geochemical signatures implying island arc and back-arc basin provenance.

This back-arc basin formed by seafloor spreading between late Oligocene and Miocene.

These extend into the back-arc basin of the Andaman Sea where there is evidence of some divergent motion.

The late subduction phase, when the opening of the Bransfield Rift and back-arc basins occur.

The Ophiolith which can be found here is not a remnant of a very big ocean, but of a small so called Back-arc basin structure.

Most obductions appear to have initiated at back-arc basins above the subduction zones during the closing of an ocean or an orogeny.

Back-arc basins are geologic features, submarine basins associated with island arcs and subduction zones.

Back-arc basins are hypothesized to form as a result of a process termed trench rollback (also, hinge rollback).

It is a back-arc basin formed by extension within the continental lithosphere behind the far deeper Ryukyu Trench-arc system.

A submarine back-arc basin develops south of Italy, which is one of several Mediterranean mini-continental fragments caught between the two plates.

The magmatically-starved Bonin arc segment has no back-arc basin, inter-arc rift, or rear-arc cross chains.

InterRidge is a non-profit organisation that promotes interdisciplinary, international studies in the research of oceanic spreading centres, including mid-ocean ridge and back-arc basin systems.