India-Eurasia ‘crash’ 47 million years ago gave birth to Himalayas

Kshatriya87

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http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...e-birth-to-Himalayas/articleshow/49743463.cms

MELBOURNE: Himalayas were born about 47 million years ago when India and Eurasia initially smashed into each other, scientists, who discovered the first oceanic microplate in the Indian Ocean, has found. Although there are at least seven microplates known in the Pacific Ocean, this is the first ancient Indian Ocean microplate to be discovered, researchers said.

Radar beam images from an orbiting satellite pinpointed the age for the collision, whose precise date has divided scientists for decades. Researchers discovered that crustal stresses caused by the initial collision cracked the Antarctic Plate far away from the collisional zone and broke off a fragment the size of Australia's Tasmania in a remote patch of the central Indian Ocean. The authors have named the ancient Indian microplate the Mammerickx Microplate, after Jacqueline Mammerickx, a pioneer in seafloor mapping.

The Mammerickx Microplate rotation is unveiled by a rotating pattern of grooves and hills that turn the topography of the ocean floor into a jagged landscape.

These so-called "abyssal hills" record a sudden increase in crustal stress, dating the birth of the Himalayan mountain range to 47 million years ago, researchers said.
 

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