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EXAMINING THE HIMALAYAS
clipped by: shankargallery

clipped from www.coloradocollege.edu

The theory of plate tectonics estimates that the Indian sub-continent has moved 4,400 kilometers northwards since the close of the Mesozoic era, 140 million years ago. About the Middle Permian or more than 200 million years ago, an extensive sea stretched along the latitude presently occupied by the Himalaya. Into this geosynclinal sea known as the Tethys (daughter of the Ocean) was depostited vast quantities of sediments from the northern Angara (Eurasian) and southern Gondwana (Indian) land mass. The Initial mountain building process started seventy million years ago when the Gondwana plate and Angara plate began to converge and collide. The sea-bed was folded and raised into longitudinal ridges and valleys. This Upper Cretaceous uplift was the first spasm of Himalayan orogeny.