When was the himalayas discovered

Continents are the "scum of the Earth," consisting mostly of light minerals like quartz, which can't sink into the Earth's dense mantle.

For at least 80 million years the oceanic Indian Plate continued its inexorable collision with southern Asia, including Tibet. The heavy ocean floor north of India acted like a giant anchor, plunging rapidly into the mantle, and dragging the Indian continent along with it, northward, towards Tibet.

As the plates collided, the sinking ocean floor generated volcanoes in southern Tibet because the rock at the top of the descending plate melted, from friction and the huge pressures of collision. However, by 25 million years ago the fast moving Indian continent had almost entirely closed over the intervening ocean, squeezing the sediments on the ocean foor.

Since the sediments were lightweight, instead of sinking along with the plate, they crumpled into mountain ranges—the Himalayas.

By 10 million years ago the two continents were in direct collision and the Indian continent, because of its enormous quantity of light quartz-rich rocks, was unable to descend along with the rest of the Indian plate. It was at about this time that the anchor chain must have broken; the descending Indian plate may have fallen off and foundered deep into the mantle. Although we don't fully understand the mechanism of what happened next, it's clear that the Indian continent began to be driven horizontally beneath Tibet like a giant wedge, forcing Tibet upwards.

Our idea was to trace the source of this sediment, hoping that this would inform us about the topographic conditions in the past, as the source of the sediment would intuitively be higher than site of accumulation. We discovered that all of the sediment that was sourced was from the nearby Ladakh Range. This was a big surprise, as there was no direct evidence for surface uplift there and geologists had hypothesised a much older rise for this range, older than million years ago as concluded in our work.

This really would push us to re-think how this growth happened in the Ladakh Range and re-evaluate other changes in the landscape. And aside from the rewarding science, working in the northwest Himalayas gave us great joy interacting with local people.

Our field guides all became well-versed geologists by the end of the field seasons. Researchers named the feature Mammerickx Microplate, for Jacqueline Mammerickx, a pioneer in seafloor mapping. It charted using high-powered radar beams from a space satellite. The collision site that first birthed the Himalayan Mountain Range continues to host and propagate tectonic stress.

The colliding plates store up energy, some of which is released via the numerous earthquakes that rumble across the plates' fault lines each year. Studying the microplates can offer geologists a more intimate history of tectonic stress in the region, but scientists have even grander aims.

They hope to detail how the collision and the rise of the Himalayas changed global climate patterns. The work may also usher in a new wave of ocean floor mapping. Currently, scientists say they have more accurate maps of Pluto than of the deep ocean floor. The study showed that 50 million years ago, India was travelling northwards at speeds of some 15 centimeters 5. Soon after, it slammed into Eurasia causing crustal stresses along the mid-ocean ridge between India and Antarctica to reach a breaking point.

Mario Aguilera , ,. JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address. Robert Monroe , ,. Credit: NASA The discovery of the first micro-tectonic plate in the Indian Ocean has allowed scientists to pinpoint the exact timing of the tectonic plate collision that gave rise to the Himalayas.