Ask Me EverythingI

What created the Himalayas?

Tell me morę: crumple zonę

A. During the age of the dinosaurs, India was an island continent, moving north toward Asia at the ratę of up to 6 in (15 cm) a year.

A Roughly 50 million years ago, India crashed into Asia. The collision slowed it down, but it kept moving north at morę than 2 in (5 cm) per year.

Most mountains are created by forces pushing the great plates of Earth’s crust together. Where the ocean floor is being driven beneath a continent, the fringes of the continent are crumpled and folded into mountain ranges. The Himalayas, though, are unique because they are being forced up by a head-on collision between two continents.

A India is now plowing beneath Asia, turning up its edge to form the mountain ridges of the Himalayas, the Karakoram, and the Hindu Kush.

AThis mountain system is the highest on Earth, containing all of the world’s “eight-thousanders” —peaks that rise above 26,250 ft (8,000 m).

believe

it

Although India is still pushing north into Asia, there have been no major earthquakes

in the region sińce the 1950s. Scientists fear that the strain is building up and could be released as a massive earthguake

in the near futurę.

Sedimentary rocks that had formed on the ocean floor between India and Asia were squeezed between the two continents and pushed up into mountains. This means that you can find fossils of shellfish at least 3 miles (5 km) above sea level.

Ice mass

There are around

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area of ioe

outside the

965,000 sq miles

(2.5 million sq km) The area covered by the Tibetan plateau—the biggest and highest in the world

1,490 miles

(2,400 km) The length of the Himalayan mountain rangę from Afghanistan in the northwest to China in the east

1,240 miles

(2,000 km) The total distance that India has pushed north into Asia sińce the two continents collided

14

The number of Himalayan peaks that are morę than 26,250 ft (8,000 m) high

2 in

(5 cm) The ratę at which the Himalayas are still rising each decade

polar regions.

WEIRD OR WHAT?

creatpri mountains are ca«edwT^^micalprooess

abso te oarbnn^efiⁱⁿ⁹' ^Which CO!^toc°ol the planet and

^tr|gger the ice ages!

Top ten Himalayan peaks

K2

28,251 ft (8,611 m)

Kangchenjunga

28,169 ft (8,586 m)

Lhotse

27,940 ft (8,516 m)

Mount Everest

29,029 ft (8,848 m)