= Solution
\b[In the interpretation of <Christopher Kincaid> and colleagues, <slab rollback> deforms and splits a <mantle plume>'s thermal anomaly: one branch is swept toward the trench beneath the <High Lava Plains>, whereas the <Snake River Plain> records the overriding plate moving over a deformed plume conduit.] Two opposite age progressions need not represent two stationary hotspots.
In the supplied map, ages decrease toward <Yellowstone> in the northeast and toward <Newberry Volcano> in the northwest. Southwestward <North American Plate> motion leaves older <Snake River Plain> volcanism to the southwest of the younger source expression. Meanwhile, rollback-driven, three-dimensional <mantle flow>, including <toroidal mantle flow> around the <slab>, carries a passive thermal anomaly trenchward beneath the <High Lava Plains>. The associated migrating heating and melting front produces the opposite younging toward <Newberry Volcano>.
The original experiment used a viscous syrup <mantle> analogue, a kinematically moved rigid <slab>, and an injected buoyant thermal plume. The result is \b[advection of deformed plume heat by subduction-driven flow], rather than simple radial spreading of an intact plume head under a stationary plate. The mapped systematic progression principally concerns <rhyolitic> volcanism; <basaltic> eruptions are more diffuse in time. This laboratory result establishes a physically plausible explanation, not a unique observational proof of the deep source geometry.<Bifurcation of the Yellowstone plume driven by subduction-induced mantle flow by Christopher Kincaid and others>[2013, Figures 2–3, interpretation of the passive thermal anomaly and deformed conduit]{ref}
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