Geologists Just Found Out What New Mexico’s Shiprock Actually Is

Shiprock rises almost 1,600 feet out of the flat New Mexico desert, with long black walls of rock running out of its base for miles. For decades it was called the core of a dead volcano. The real story is stranger. Shiprock is the shattered throat of a steam-driven explosion that happened more than half a mile underground, around 24 million years ago. And a 2007 study of the walls around it found something that doesn't fit the textbook picture: the magma inside them appears to have flowed toward the rock, not away from it. In this video, we look at how Shiprock formed, why its age is younger than most sources say, what the Diné (Navajo) name Tsé Bitʼaʼí, "the rock with wings," tells us about the same features geologists study, and how Shiprock connects to the crater theory at Wyoming's Devils Tower. CHAPTERS 0:00 The rock that doesn't belong 1:00 Seven walls in the desert 2:20 The Needle, the Ship, and Howel Williams 4:00 What blew up here? 5:00 A crater with a root 7:00 The walls run the wrong way 9:00 Shiprock was never alone 10:30 The rock with wings 12:40 The Devils Tower connection 14:00 What we know, and what we don't