| | | At the time the Indian plate was rapidly moving northward towards the Eurasian plate.
At the start of the 1980s, the question of what forced dinosaurs and huge numbers of other creatures to become extinct 65 million years ago was still a mystery.
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Eighty million years ago, India was approximately 6400 km (3968 miles) south of the Eurasian plate. Separating the two was the Tethys Sea. The Indo-Australian tectonic plate – containing the continent of Australia, the Indian subcontinent, and surrounding ocean – was pushed northward by the convection currents generated in the inner mantle. For millions of years, India made its way across the sea toward the Eurasian plate. As India approached Asia, around 40 million years ago, the Tethys Sea began to shrink and its seabed slowly pushed upwards. The Tethys Sea disappeared completely around 20 million years ago and sediments rising from its seabed formed a mountain range. When India and Tibet collided, instead of descending with the plate, the relatively light sedimentary and metamorphic rock that makes up the subcontinent of India pushed against Tibet, forcing it upwards, and created a massive mountain fold. The Himalayas. |
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