LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – The Nevada Department of Corrections has confirmed an inmate is dead due to a stabbing incident at High Desert State Prison.

According to NDOC on Jan. 15, 43-year-old Michael Dorotiak died at University Medical Center in Las Vegas.

Dorotiak was serving a sentence of 28 to 72 months at the maximum security prison for coercion.

Officials report an autopsy was requested and the family of Dorotiak have been notified.

Dorotiak was transferred from Clark County on Sept. 27, 2024.

The incident is under investigation.

This is a developing story.

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Source: Geophysical Research Letters

The processes that form continental crust from the denser basaltic rocks of the upper mantle may make the lower lithosphere denser than the underlying mantle. One theory holds that the lower lithosphere splits away and sinks into the mantle in a process called foundering. Conclusive evidence of foundering, however, has been hard to come by.

Peering deep under California’s Sierra Nevada, Schulte-Pelkum and Kilb discovered new evidence of lithospheric foundering in progress. The team imaged the lower crust and uppermost mantle beneath the Sierra Nevada with receiver function analysis, which uses seismic waves that change as they cross structures beneath the surface.

They also studied earthquake data from the Advanced National Seismic System Comprehensive Earthquake Catalog, or ComCat. They found a band of seismicity in the central Sierra, in which small earthquakes (ranging from magnitude 1.9 to 3.2) occur at the unusual depths of 40 kilometers and greater.

Differences in receiver functions along the mountain range revealed a distinct layer in the mantle, which grows gradually less distinct farther north. This aligns with the existing hypothesis that a section of the lithosphere beneath the southern Sierra sank (foundered) millions of years ago.

A slab of colder continental lithosphere also has the capacity to crack, rather than to stretch and flow like hot material typically found at such depths. This likely also explains the presence of such deep earthquakes in the central Sierra, according to the authors.

The researchers found no evidence of this layer in the northern Sierra, indicating foundering has yet to progress to that region.

This work aligns with previous studies that found a gradient Moho, rather than a sharply defined crust-mantle boundary, under the Sierra. It also matches previous suggestions that a cold mantle anomaly under the Great Valley region to the west may be dense lithosphere lost to the foundering process. Foundering has been ongoing in the Sierra for at least 3 million years according to this hypothesis, and the researchers say it may be progressing northward. This region provides evidence of a process of differentiation that occurs throughout Earth’s crust, they argue. (Geophysical Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL111290, 2024)

—Nathaniel Scharping (@nathanielscharp), Science Writer

Citation: Scharping, N. (2025), Deep beneath California’s Sierra Nevada, Earth’s lithosphere may be peeling away, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250020. Published on 17 January 2025.

Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Related

LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – The wildfires that are spreading in Los Angeles have caused many to worry about possible risks we have in Southern Nevada.

The Henderson Fire Department wants to assure residents here that the fire danger is not the same even if we have a similar climate.

FOX5 met with Henderson Fire Department Chief Scott Vivier, at Whitney Mesa trail.

“So we are able to get into areas like this and do prevention,” Vivier said.

Though Whitney Mesa trail has had brush fires before, Chief Vivier said the structures are not that close together.

According to Chief Vivier, prevention is key.

His team partners with U.S. Forestry and finds areas with dry vegetation and chops them down.

“They don’t just cut down on brush down, they cut the right type of brush down and protect other types of brush,” Vivier said.

One of the many advantages we have in Southern Nevada, are the main roads that are wide enough to act as a fire breaker.

For example, if a brush fire were to start at a park, the main road in front of it would act as a fire breaker to help stop the fire from spreading to buildings across the street.

The City of Henderson said through their yearly mitigation they found two areas in the Cadence community on their radar however, the risk is still very low.

Whereas, in the LA area, Chief Vivier said one of the contributing factors why the fire spread so quick is because of the amount of land between houses.

Here in southern Nevada, the fact that we have more urban areas than greenery help us.

“We make the joke that because we are desert a lot of dirt doesn’t burn, we have far more dirt and rocks than bushes,” Vivier said.

The Henderson Fire Department studies every single square foot of the city when they do their wildfire risk assessment.

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