This photograph from northwestern New Mexico shows a ridge roughly 30 feet (about 10 meters) tall that formed from lava filling an underground fracture then resisting erosion better than the material around it did.
This photograph from northwestern New Mexico shows a ridge roughly 30 feet (about 10 meters) tall that formed from lava filling an underground fracture then resisting erosion better than the material around it did.
The dike extends from a volcanic peak (out of view here) called Shiprock in English and Tsé Bitʼaʼí, meaning “rock with wings,” in the Navajo language. It offers an Earth analog for some larger hardened-lava walls on Mars, shown at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21264.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech