Science Alert  October 17, 2022 Within extreme continental extension areas, ductile middle crust is exhumed at the surface as metamorphic core complexes. A team of researchers in the US (Columbia University, Stony Brook University, University of Houston, Purdue University) developed a general model for metamorphic core complexes formation and demonstrated that they resulted from the collapse of a mountain belt supported by a thickened crustal root. They showed that gravitational body forces generated by topography and crustal root caused an upward flow pattern of the ductile lower-middle crust, facilitated by a detachment surface evolving into low-angle normal fault. This detachment […]