The Himalayas are the world’s highest and youngest mountain range, formed when the Indian subcontinent collided with the Eurasian plate. The range includes Mt. Everest and nine other peaks over 8,000 meters. The range has the world’s largest concentration of glaciers outside the polar regions. The Himalayas emerged at the former location of the Tethys Ocean and were once part of the Indian coast. The range has the highest uplift rate in the world, but scientists think it may not last long.
The Himalayas, in Pakistan, India, Nepal and China, are the highest mountain range in the world. It was created when the tectonic plate containing the Indian subcontinent collided with the Eurasian plate, which contains Europe and most of Asia. As the two plates pushed against each other, the earth rose up, forming the mountains.
mt. Everest, the world’s highest mountain at 8,848 meters (29,029 feet) above sea level, is found in this range, along with nine other peaks over 8,000 meters (26,246 feet) in height, called the eight-thousanders. The range surpasses every other mountain range in the world, and the tallest mountain outside Asia – Aconcagua, in the Andes – is only 6,962 meters (22,841 feet) high. The Himalayan range also has the world’s largest concentration of glaciers outside the polar regions.
Although the Himalayan Mountains are the tallest in the world, they are also among the youngest mountain ranges on the planet, with substantial growth occurring in just the last million years. They started growing about 50 million years ago when the Indian subcontinent, which was an island continent under Eurasia, crashed into the Eurasian mainland due to continental drift. Prior to this, the Indian plate was one of the fastest tectonic plates in the world, traveling north at a rate of 6.3 inches/year (16 cm/year).
When the Indian plate hit the Eurasian plate, parts of the former began to subduct (go under) each other, and its rate of movement slowed by about half. The soft sediments that covered the northern edge of the island continent began to crumble, heaving, as the Indian plate also pressed the Eurasian plate upwards. This is the birth of the Himalayas. They emerged at the former location of the Tethys Ocean, which existed 200 million years earlier. Even today, fossils of coastal creatures can be found in the mountains, as the high peaks were once part of the Indian coast.
Some of the largest earthquakes in history have occurred due to tectonic forces released by the interaction between the Indian plate and the Eurasian plate. More recently, over the past million years, mountains have stopped growing as rapidly. Scientists think this may be because the Eurasian plate is starting to stretch rather than just being uplifted. However, this mountain range has the highest uplift rate in the world, rising about 5 mm per year. This rate of uplift, estimated at about 3.1 miles (5 km) per million years, is not expected to last long.
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