Sentences with phrase «buried rift zone»

But the high - density rocks below the NMSZ redirect that pressure downward, putting faults in the buried rift zone under significantly more pressure than the surrounding terrain.

The plate failed to split completely, but geologists think that the event left scars below the NMSZ: a buried rift zone, where the rocks are weak and fractured, over plutons — blobs of dense igneous rock — that themselves rose from an upwelling of unusually dense lower crust.