Major mountain ranges of the world

Story hook

50 million years ago, a thin shard of continental crust the size of Australia is finishing the fastest plate journey in geological history — moving north at 15 cm/year for 80 million years from its Gondwanan parking spot off East Africa. The shard is the Indian Plate. Its destination: the southern margin of the Eurasian Plate.

When the two plates meet, neither subducts — both are continental, both have low-density granitic crust. They crumple instead. Sediments of the Tethys Sea that had accumulated for 100 million years between them get scraped up, folded, thrust skyward. What was sea floor becomes the Tibetan Plateau at 4,500 m + the Himalayas at 8,000 m. Marine fossils — ammonites — turn up at Everest's summit, where George Mallory pocketed one in 1924.

That collision is still happening. The Indian Plate continues to push north at ~5 cm/year, raising the Himalayas by 5 mm/year. The same logic builds the Alps (African + Eurasian plates), the Andes (Nazca subducting under South American), the Rockies (complex Cretaceous Laramide orogeny), the Atlas (African + Eurasian), the Urals (Siberia + Baltica, 290 Ma ago). Every great mountain range on Earth is a fossilised plate-tectonic encounter. Knowing the ranges is knowing the plates is knowing how the world's landforms came to be.

Why this matters for UPSC

Syllabus location: GS-I — World Physical Geography (landforms). Asked in Prelims almost every year as direct location MCQs (Atlas

• Drakensberg + Pyrenees) or matching pairs (range ↔ peak ↔ country). Mains 2014 + 2018 (plate tectonics + Himalayan orogeny), 2022 (climate
• mountain ranges). The "Seven Summits" are a stock interview anchor. Highest-yield zone: peak names + heights + countries + boundary type.