In 2002 Klein sailed to the East Pacific Rise to further research a tectonic plate named the Galapagos Microplate. She wanted to carry out her endeavour to find lava samples of the incipient rift. They found volcanic activity along the entire rift, discovering that it was a plate boundary and what could be a newly forming microplate. This finding essentially caused scientists to rethink research on the evolution of the Galapagos microplate area.
