Wing’ Dike of Hardened Lava in New Mexico

This photograph from Shiprock in 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.
January 25, 2017
CreditNASA/JPL-Caltech
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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.

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