this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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Science Memes

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Roots of Mother Appalachia (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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https://www.cntraveler.com/story/appalachian-mountains-may-have-once-been-as-tall-as-the-himalayas

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[–] [email protected] 104 points 1 year ago (3 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

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year 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

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

And theoretically the Atlas in Northern Africa

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Big deal, Americans do the same every day!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Dammit! I am sleep deprived and grumpy, but you got a good chuckle out of me... Thanks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Ok yeah this was good

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year 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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Unlikely, the Andes are newer.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

No, the Andes are part of the American Cordillera, which also includes the Sierra Nevada and Sierra Madre and has to do with the Pacific Plate/Ring of Fire