English

Noun

obduction

1. (obsolete) The act of drawing or laying over, as a covering.
2. (largely obsolete) An autopsy.
3. (geology) The overthrusting of continental crust by oceanic crust or rocks from the mantle, such that the oceanic crust is thrust onto the continental crust, as occurs at a convergent plate boundary when the continental crust is caught in a subduction zone.
   • 2012, Joseph A. DiPietro, Landscape Evolution in the United States (ISBN 0123978068), page 340:

     Ongoing accretion at a subduction zone, and the obduction of intact ophiolite slabs, are not considered to be collision.

References

• obduction in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913