Our dad, a geologist who worked for GSI, used to describe the formation of the Himalayan mountain range to us. He explained the tectonic shifts and how the geologists concluded that it was formed by the collision of the tectonic plates underneath the oceanfloor.
There was an interesting piece in Discovery News on this topic.
By Michael Reilly | Sat Jan 30, 2010 03:19 PM ET
Fun fact for you: scientists don't really know how the Himalayas formed. I mean yeah, they realize that the India tectonic plate is slamming into the Eurasia plate and has been for about 50 million years, but the mystery is why the mountain range is still growing. Usually when two continents collide it's like a car wreck -- there may be a bunch of mangled crust in the middle (mountains), but both vehicles stop moving.
Turns out, India appears to be sinking into the mantle. A new study based on computer models of the two plates shows that the formation and continued growth of the world's highest mountain range makes the most sense if a dense piece of India is down in the mantle, dragging the rest of the continent down with it.
That may not sound so weird but continents are buoyant; they're supposed to float, not sink. All the subduction you hear about all over the world is dense ocean crust sinking underneath continents. Except in the Himalayas. It's as though two cars collided, and one started to sink into the pavement."
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