Our Amazing Planet - Becky Oskin, 12/13/12
MBARI researchers used the “manipulator arm” on ROV Doc Ricketts to collect rock samples from the rhyolite dome.
CREDIT: (c) 2012 MBARI
SAN FRANCISCO — Scientists have discovered one of the world's weirdest volcanoes on the seafloor near the tip of Baja, Mexico.
The petite dome — about 165 feet tall (50 meters) and 4,000 feet long by 1,640 feet wide (1,200 m by 500 m) — lies along the Alarcón Rise, a seafloor-spreading center. Tectonic forces are tearing the Earth's crust apart at the spreading center, creating a long rift where magma oozes toward the surface, cools and forms new ocean crust.
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