• uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    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

    • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        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

      • uniqueid198x@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        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.

      • protist
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        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