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Rocks Recovered from San Andreas Fault
For the first time, geologists have extracted intact rock samples--or "cores"--from two miles beneath the surface of the San Andreas Fault, which runs 800 miles along the length of California. This is the first time that cores from deep inside an actively moving tectonic boundary have been available to study, and scientists hope they will help answer long-standing questions about the fault's composition and properties.
This image accompanied NSF press release, "Geologists Recover Rocks From San Andreas Fault."
Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation
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