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Himalayas
Himalayas are a large mountain system in Asia that forms a barrier between the Tibetan plateau to the north and the floodplains of the Indian subcontinent to the south The Himalayas include the tallest mountains in the world, with more than 110 peaks rising to heights of 7,300 meters or more above sea level. One of those peaks is Mount Everest, the highest in the world, with an elevation of 8,850 meters Height of Mount Everest. The high peaks of the mountains rise to the area of perpetual snow -
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225 million years ago
India was an island off the Australian coast and separated from Asia by the Tethys Ocean. The supercontinent Pangea began to divide 200 Ma and India began a drift north towards Asia. 80 Ma India was located 6,400 km south of the Asian continent, but it was advancing towards it at a speed of 9-16 cm per year. At this time, the floor of the Tethys Ocean would have been subducting northward under Asia and the margin of the plate would have been a convergent continental-ocean. -
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201-145 million years ago
During the Jurassic Period (about 201 to 145 million years ago), a deep descending crustal deformation, the Tethys Ocean, bordered the entire southern fringe of Eurasia, then excluding the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent. -
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180 million years ago
About 180 million years ago, the old supercontinent of Gondwana began to fragment. One of the Gondwana fragments, the lithospheric plate that included the Indian subcontinent, followed a northward collision course toward the Eurasian plate for the next 130 to 140 million years. -
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140 million years ago
The Indian plate was originally attached to Madagascar, East Africa and Antarctica, from which it was separated during the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana. India thus became an island that moved rapidly northward (15/20 cmm per year) along the Indian Ocean, driven by crustal growth along the Indic mid-ocean ridges. -
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140-130 million years ago
The Indian-Australian plate gradually confined the Tetis trench within a giant clamp between it and the Eurasian plate. As Thetis trench narrowed, increasing compressive forces bent the layers of rock beneath it and created interlocking faults in its marine sediments. Masses of granites and basalts intruded from deep within the mantle into this weakened sedimentary crust. -
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70 million years ago
The Indo-Australian Plate began to move northward, eventually separating into the Indian and Australian plates. -
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65 million years ago
65 million years ago, powerful Earth plate tectonic forces have moved the Earth's crust to form the band of Eurasian mountain ranges, including the Himalayas, stretching from the Alps to the mountains of Southeast Asia. -
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50-55 million years ago
Himalayan orogenesis begins. The Indic plate begins to collide with the Eurasian plate somewhere at equatorial latitudes. Since then it has penetrated north into the Asian continent. Even today India continues its northward movement relative to stable Eurasia at a rate of about 5 centimeters per year. -
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40-50 million years ago
Some 40 to 50 million years ago, the Indian subcontinent finally collided with Eurasia. The plate containing India was sheared down, or subducted, under the Tetis trench at an increasing rate. -
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50-20 million years ago
Over the next 30 million years, the shallow parts of the Tethys Ocean gradually drained as the seabed was pushed upward by the sinking Indian-Australian plate; that action formed the Tibetan plateau. At the southern tip of the plateau, the fringe mountains became the region's first major river basin and rose high enough to become a climatic barrier. -
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20 million years ago
Finally, some 20 million years ago, during the early Miocene Epoch, the tempo of the crunching union between the two plates increased sharply, and Himalayan mountain building began in earnest. As the Indian subcontinental plate continued to plunge beneath the former Tethys trench, the topmost layers of old Gondwana metamorphic rocks peeled back over themselves for a long horizontal distance to the south, forming nappes. -
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600.000 years ago
Probably only within the past 600,000 years, during the Pleistocene Epoch (2,600,000-11,700 years ago), did the Himalayas become the highest mountains on Earth. If strong horizontal thrusting characterized the Miocene and the succeeding Pliocene Epoch (23-2.6 million years ago), intense uplift epitomized the Pleistocene. Along the core zone of the northernmost nappes—and just beyond—crystalline rocks containing new gneiss and granite intrusions emerged to produce the staggering crests seen today -
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200.000 years ago
In some valleys, such as the Kashmir Valley and the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, lakes were temporarily formed and then filled with Pleistocene deposits. After drying up about 200,000 years ago, the Kathmandu Valley rose at least 200 meters (650 feet), an indication of elevation located within the lower Himalayas. -
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Present time
The Himalayas are a tremendously seismic mountain range and frequent earthquakes record the movement of the indica plate, which subducted both below the Himalayas and Tibet. The most intense earthquakes occur every 100-500 years, and mapping their distribution reveals areas where the earthquakes have released accumulated stress, and areas where an upcoming rupture is expected. To this day, the Himalayas continue to rise.
