The main pict is generated by AI and a misleading hallucination, or as we use to call it "totally wrong".
I'm not a geologist, so I have to take a few guess to read the main paper https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady8347
<IIUC>
When the slab in the subsection one goes under another slab, it does not get destroyed, but goes down quite intact. But from time to time (every few million years?) a part split. See figure 8 D. So the split is already covered with a huge layer of soil (like 10kn?) and above that a swallow sea (like .1km). Note also that they split is a very different way
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Press Research
So the main graphic of the press article is wrong in many aspects.
</IIUC>
or as we use to call it artist rendering. Artistic visualizations have been part of articles long before generative AI came along.
I agree, a lot of them were horrible too.
The main pic is AI generated, according to the credit caption.
The main pic makes absolutely zero sense. The sides are tilted upwards, so clearly they were moving towards each other. But there's a big gap, so clearly they're moving away from each other. I was mentally sketching out a scenario where it was first one then the other, until I realized it was just AI slop.