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"Seismologist Deborah Kilb was wading through California earthquake records from the past four decades when she noticed something odd," reports CNN, "a series of deep earthquakes that had occurred under the Sierra Nevada at a depth where Earth's crust would typically be too hot and high pressure for seismic activity..." Kilb flagged the data to Vera Schulte-Pelkum, a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences and an associate research professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder... Using the newfound data, the researchers imaged the Sierra Nevada through a technique known as receiver function analysis, which uses seismic waves to map Earth's internal structure. The scientists found that in the central region of the mountain range, Earth's crust is currently peeling away, a process scientifically known as lithospheric foundering. Kilb and Schulte-Pelkum reported the findings in December in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The hypothesis lined up with previous speculation that the area had undergone lithospheric foundering, which happens when Earth's outermost layer sinks into the lower layer of the mantle. Now, the study authors believe that the process is ongoing and is currently progressing to the north of the mountain range, according to the study... What's happening under the Sierra Nevada could offer rare insight into how the continents formed, Schulte-Pelkum said. The finding could also help scientists identify more areas where this process is happening as well as provide a better understanding of earthquakes and how our planet operates, she added... Evidence for this process has been hard to come by. It is not visible from above ground, and it's an extremely slow process. Scientists theorize that the south Sierra finished the process of lithospheric foundering about 4 million to 3 million years ago, according to the study. It appears that these natural events happen occasionally around the world, Schulte-Pelkum said. "Geologically speaking, this is a pretty quick process with long periods of stability in between. ... This (lithosphere foundering) probably started happening a long time ago when we started building continents, and (the continents) have gotten bigger over time. So it's just sort of this punctuated, localized thing," she added... Further study within this area could also help scientists better understand how the Earth evolves on long timescales. If the lithospheric foundering continues underneath the mountain range, one can speculate that the land will continue to stretch vertically, changing the way the landscape looks now [said Mitchell McMillan, a research geologist and postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech, who was not involved with the study]. But that could take anywhere from several hundred thousand to a few million years, he added.

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