The Himalayas are known to be immature fold mountains. Young. because these have been formed comparatively late in the earth’s history. compared to older mountain scopes like the Aravallis in India. and the Appalachian in the USA. They are known as crease mountains because the mountains extend for 2500 kilometer in length in a series of parallel ridges or creases. The recognized theory about the formation of the Himalayas started to take form in the twelvemonth 1912 when German meteorologist Alfred Wegener developed his Theory of Continental Drift. Harmonizing to Wegener. the Earth was composed of several elephantine home bases called tectonic home bases. On these home bases lie the continents and the oceans of the Earth. The continents were said to hold formed a individual mass at one point in clip. From this individual mass. today’s continents have “drifted” apart from each other over a period of 1000000s of old ages. We pick up the narrative about 250 million old ages ago. During this clip. all the earth’s land was a individual super continent called Pangea. which was surrounded by a big ocean. Around 200 million old ages ago ( besides known as the Middle Permian Period ) . an extended sea stretched along the latitudinal country soon occupied by the Himalayas.
This sea was named the Tethys. Around this period. the ace continent Pangea began to bit by bit divide into different land multitudes and travel apart in different waies. As a consequence. rivers from both the northern Eurasian land mass ( called Angara ) and the southern Indian land mass ( called Gondwana ) started lodging big sums of deposits into the shallow sea that was the Tethys. There were marine animate beings called ammonoids populating in the sea at the clip. The two land multitudes. the Eurasiatic and the Indian sub-continent. moved closer and closer. Indian home base was traveling north approximately at the rate of about 15 centimeters per twelvemonth ( 6 inches per twelvemonth ) . The initial mountain edifice procedure started about 70 million old ages ago ( or the Upper Cretaceous period ) when the two land multitudes ( or home bases ) began to clash with each other. As a consequence. the already shallow ocean floors quickly folded and was raised into longitudinal ridges and vales. Soon afterwards. about 65 million old ages ago ( Upper Eocene Period ) . came the 2nd stage of mountain edifice. The bed of the Tethys started lifting once more.
The sea retreated. and the ocean floor was elevated into high mountain scopes. Subsequently. about 25 million old ages ago ( Middle Miocene Period ) came another mountain edifice period. which led to the formation of the low Shivalik scopes. After this. periodic mountain edifice stages occurred as the Indian home base pushed against the Eurasiatic home bases. which led to the Himalayan ranges lifting further. The last major stage occurred 600. 000 old ages ago. Although the stage of major turbulence of the Himalayas has passed. the Himalayas are still lifting. albeit at a much slower rate. The Indian home base is continuously traveling north at the rate of about 2 cm’s every twelvemonth. Because of this ground the Himalayas are lifting at the rate of about 5 millimeters per twelvemonth.
This means that the Himalayas are still geologically active and structurally unstable. For this ground. temblors are a frequent happening in the full Himalayan part. It has to be understood that it is impossible to observe the motion of the home bases and uplifting of the Himalayas by insouciant observation. However. a modern engineering called Global Positioning System ( GPS ) has made it possible to mensurate even such a slow motion of the home bases. The Alps in Europe are another illustration of a mountain concatenation that formed due to the hit of tectonic home bases.
