One of the most dramatic ranges on the Earth. “Dating this collision requires looking at a complex set of geological and geophysical data, and no doubt discussion about when this major collision first started will continue, but we have added a completely new, independent observation,” said co-author Dietmar Müller, also of the University of Sydney, in a statement. The process of mountain building involved with such chains involves a convergent boundary between two plates. What type of plate boundary is the Himalayas convergent plate boundary Typically, a convergent plate boundarysuch as the one between the Indian Plate and the Eurasian Plateforms towering mountain ranges, like the Himalaya, as Earth’s crust is crumpled and pushed upward. immediately juxtaposed across ITSZ - the plate boundary. Previous age estimates had ranged from 34 million to 59 million years. most controversial topics in the Himalayan tectonics, as it is estimated anywhere between 65 and. By reconstructing the jigsaw puzzle of tectonic plates and calculating the distances the plates have traveled over time, the team dated the formation of the microplate - and the collision - to 47 million years ago, providing one of the first concrete dates for the birth of the Himalayas. Matthews and her colleagues propose that this massive collision altered the prevailing tectonic stresses far to the south at the plate boundary, causing a chunk of seafloor to break free from the surrounding oceanic crust and form the Mammerickx Microplate. Kara Matthews of the University of Sydney in Australia and colleagues identified this seafloor section as a previously undiscovered tectonic plate - dubbed the Mammerickx Microplate - that must have formed during the plate collision between India and Eurasia.Ībout 50 million years ago, India was moving north at a tectonically speedy rate of 15 centimeters a year when it slammed into Eurasia. The imagery revealed a unique jagged section of the seafloor, characterized by a rotating pattern of grooves and hills. A subduction zone is usually marked by a deep trench on the sea floor. In the study, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, scientists relied on satellite radar imagery of the seafloor under the central Indian Ocean. A subduction zone is a plate boundary along which one plate of the Earth’s outer shell descends (subducts) at an angle beneath another (Figure 4.14). In a new study, researchers have now pinpointed the date of the initial collision between India and Eurasia that led to the birth of the Himalayas. The Himalayas are the highest and widest mountain range on the planet, but when they began forming has never been clear. By dating crust that broke off during the initial collision between India and Eurasia, scientists have been able to pinpoint the birthdate of the Himalayas for the first time.
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