HIMALAYA OROGENY BOITUMELO GABANKITSE ID NO: 201201609 GEO 402 TERM PAPER Introduction 250 Million years ago, the continents were part of one super-continent, called Pangea. Due to plate tectonics, the crustal plates of the earth moving independently, pushing and pulling into one another and creating constant geologic activity, the continent of Pangea was ripped apart. The new continents slowly spread around the world creating the continents and oceans that we know today. Based on the publication by (Windley, 1995) as a part of this ripping apart, the Indian plate broke off from the bottom of Pangea and began to move northward, toward the larger Eurasian plate. India charged across the ocean at a rate of 10 – 15 cm/ year, an unusually
Already there were evolved organisms spread out across the vast land. During the breakup of Pangaea, resulted two supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana. These two split, moved, and so on. This resulted in many changes of environment, which caused animals to adapt and evolve to the isolated environment of islands. For example, Australia had been isolated by water resulting in the mammals not having any competition from the outside world.
With an altitude of 4500m, the Tibetan Plateau provided protection and isolation from invaders and influences from the western world. Another natural geographic feature that protected the Chinese was the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts. The Gobi desert was a very dry area with limited rainfall; it would make many groups of invaders too afraid to cross it, or die along the way. The Taklamakan desert included both extremes of climate, being hot during the day and extremely cold during the night. China was bordered on the east by the broad Pacific Ocean, providing food and protection from invading ships.
In the other hand, the Mayan civilization developed in Yucatan Peninsula around 200 B.C., and mysterious disappeared around 900 A.D. However, these two cultures share many factors in common such as developing calendars and building pyramids. Even though civilizations developed in different time periods, they can still have many factors in common such as environment, language, and architecture. Although the two civilizations flourished in different parts of the world, their environment shared some common features. As noted before, the Mayans thrived in the Yucatan peninsula, which is made up of jungles and lowlands.
Mid-ocean ridges are sub-surfaced mountain ranges located at the boundaries between the tectonic plates that make up the Earth’s crust (van Dover, 2000; Tivey, 2007; Martin et al., 2008). As the plates are pulled apart by tectonic forces, hot soft rock from the deep Earth emerges to fill the fissure. As the generated ocean crust laterally moves away from the spreading-axis, the age of the crust and the depth of the sediment cover increase systematically (van Dover, 2000). Therefore, different types of hydrothermal vents occur at different areas of the ultramafic sea floor. The simplest of these are the columnar sulfide chimneys at the East Pacific Rise (EPR).
Such factors include strikingly similar key-shaped hole tombs containing like strains of jade found in modern Busan, South Korea and in Kyushu, Japan (Lee 7). However, the leading premise used in Egami’s theory is the radical and abrupt change that occurred in Japan during the late Kofun period (Kirkland 110). Egami states that: “During the Late [Kofun] era the peaceful, agricultural, magico-ritualistic, Southeast Asian qualities of the culture of the Yayoi period and the early [Kofun] era were replaced to a large extent by the very practical, warlike, king-and-noble-dominated, North Asian qualities of the equestrian people” (Kirkland 110 and Egami et. al). Egami goes on to explain that this change was too abrupt to have occurred naturally by the indigenous peoples of Japan because the peaceful and mainly agricultural society of Japan at the time would have no reason to willingly adopt such a grotesque, violent alien culture (Kirkland 110).
With an elevation of 8,586 meters, it lies within the eastern Himalayas sharing the border between Sikkim state of northeastern India and eastern part of Nepal, Darjiling. Besides, it erects very elegantly as a part of great Himalaya range, having a massif in the form of an enormous cross. According to experts, it is composed of rocks made of Neoproterozoic that belongs to Ordovician age which is believed to be about 445 million to 1 billion years old. Furthermore, the mountain bears certain fluctuation in its climate: Its glaciers gather heavy snow fall during the summer monsoon season. It gathers lighter snowfall during the
Also Gondwanaland was in the final stages of development. Gondwanaland was a very large continent made up of what is now South America, Africa, Arabia, Madagascar, India, Australia, and Antarctica.
Scientists today have been able to develop Wagner’s theory and prove that when you place all the continents in their past places they fit together to form one whole continent which was formally named Pangea. Shape of the continents is a major piece of evidence for plate tectonics because it proves that it all used to be one continent but broke away over time thus proving that the earths surface shifts which can also be known as plate tectonics. Definition of continental drift Continental drift is a theory that continents move, crash into each other’s surface, and form new continents over periods of geological time, although the continental drift theory was discarded, it did introduce the idea of continents moving to geoscience and decades later scientists would confirm some of Wenger’s ideas such as the past existence of a supercontinent also known as Pangea joining all worlds landmasses at one. Causes of continental
One of the plates is the Philippine Sea plate, an oceanic plate subducting under the Eurasian plate, a continental plate. The plates of a convergent boundary push into each other and since one of them is an oceanic plate, the Philippine Sea Plate which is denser than a continental plate, it subducts under the Eurasian plate. Subducting plates generally move at a speed between 7 and 11 centimeters per year. Convergent Boundaries featuring an oceanic and continental boundary can form different types of landforms such as volcanoes like Mount Mayon and trenches such as The Challenger Deep, a part of South Pacific’s Marianas Trench. To form these landforms, the convection currents in the lithosphere causes the tectonic plates to move towards each other.