Mark JoeMarie A.

Borres BSF 2A April 28, 2021

A research article entitled “Benham Rise unveiled: Morphology and structure of an Eocene large
igneous province in the West Philippine Basin” was written by Jenny Barretto, Ray Wood, and John
Milsom. The authors were among the key scientists of the Benham Rise UNCLOSE technical working
group. This research paper aims to describe the morphological features of Benham Rise as revealed by
multibeam bathymetry and other available geological and geophysical data which presents the origin of
features such as the shield-building, caldera formation, and post-caldera/late-stage volcanism to evaluate
existing ideas and to present new ones.

The Benham Rise is an oceanic large igneous province at the western margin of the Philippine Sea.
It is also called the Luzon Plateau or the Philippine Rise, which is an undersea feature located immediately
east of northern Luzon in the Philippines. The Benham Rise is one of several bathymetric highs in the West
Philippine Basin along with the Urdaneta Plateau, the Oki-Daito Rise, the Oki-Daito, and Daito Ridges,
and the Amami Plateau (Hilde and Lee, 1984; Ishizuka et al., 2013). Through detailed methods and skillful
observation, multibeam bathymetry data reveal that the Benham Rise is an oceanic plateau with a platform
base characterized by very large terraces and a crest with a caldera morphology.

The authors lacked in giving definitions to certain terms which may become a challenge to some
readers who are not very knowledgeable about this research topic. In some sections, the authors should
have stated a summarized version of the cited articles instead of just giving the citation. This should be
done for the reader to have in-depth knowledge regarding the information given by the provided articles.
However, the assumptions were all addressed and answered with sufficient supporting information and
references. The recorded data and results were very well presented and thoroughly explained.

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