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Roots of Mother Appalachia (mander.xyz)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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https://www.cntraveler.com/story/appalachian-mountains-may-have-once-been-as-tall-as-the-himalayas

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[–] 104 points 2 years ago (10 children)

Small? The Appalachians today are the resting skeleton of a mountain range so tall and enduring that the mud and sand that washed off them piled miles high and formed the Catskill mountains. The Appalachians were so mighty that their garbage formed mountains

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  • [–] 50 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Also they spread so far that they were broken when Pangaea, the first landmass, split apart. The other half is the Scottish Highlands. They are older than the Atlantic Ocean between them.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago

    One nit, pangea wasn't the first supercontinent, we know of at least two, maybe three before it. The stone of the Adirondak mountains was formed as part of the Grenville mountains, which were built by a suprecontinent 1.5 billion years ago (the adirondaks got tall be'ause of a much more recent, unrelated thing, but their stone is very old). The Grenville runs from Hudson Bay to Texas

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Isn't Appalachia part of the Andes too, or are they unrelated?

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    Completely unrelated. North and south america wern't attached when the appalachians were tall. The Andes are formed by an ocean plate (the Nazca plate) dragging as it is sucked under south america. They are tall, and still growing taller.

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