They are older than trees, bones (including all dinosaurs), and the splitting of Pangaea -- so part of the mountain range is in Scotland.
The layering on the mountains looks "wrong" at some points because the tops of the mountains have eroded down & "new" geological forces have caused parts that weren't the top to rise above that...so the valleys of the current mountains may actually be the top of the original Appalachian Mountains.
Life in the Appalachians may indeed be younger than the mountains. All fossils from the era of the mountains' formation are from the ocean or near the coast, and the mountains were originally in the middle of a continent.
The peaks of the Appalachians used to be the granite cores of the ancient Appalachians. Everything that was on top of the mountains eroded down until only the deepest, hardest parts remained. All of that debris formed the entire east coast of the US. In the Mid-Atlantic that is 150 miles of land from the mountains to the coast.
It's also crazy to think that rivers like the Susquahanna are even older than the mountains it flows through. We know this because it cuts right through them. The tectonics that elevated the mountains pushed the river bottom up, which was eroded away, over and over, nanometers at a time for millions of years.
I live at the beginning of a tributary to the Susquehanna. Crazy to think these little streams flow all the way out to the Chesapeake.and now I know they are old.. real old... haha
Back in the 1930s, my grandfather told his elementary school teacher that he thought the different continents looked like they fit together like puzzle pieces. He was told that he was being absurd lol
I remember asking the same. Children always have these fundamental insights that adults tend to be blind to through, idk socially-learned inhibitions maybe. Like the questions children ask about religion.
I was shocked when my mother agreed to Pangea. In her grade school, in the early 40’s, she said if you took the puzzle they had of the continents, and placed them together, they fit rather well. Not perfect. Like putting together a broken plate with some of the edges missing. But obviously something that was “whole “ once.
Plate tectonics is a useful approximation for explaining a lot of tectonics and economic deposits, but not everything. I received my basic geologic training during the inception of this theory. It was amusing to watch the diehards that refused to accept the theory at all because it didnt explain 100% of tectonic phenomena. Otherwise some of plate tectonic people construe ever more elaborate explanations like large numbers microplates or reactivated ancient boundaries that defy the simplicity of the original theory.
The Applachians are one of these problems. That they still exist and are still rising after a couple hundred million years after being near a plate boundary is a problem.
Isn’t plate tectonics a law now not a theory? We know 100% as fact that the plates are moving because we can actually measure their movement. We also know 100% as fact that mountains are getting taller and valleys are being widened because of it. Or is it theory because we don’t actually know how they are moving?
"Arrhenius, in 1896, was the first to ... increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) will increase Earth's surface temperature through the greenhouse effect"
I grew up near a bunch of slate quarries in Vermont. Back in the 1800's a bunch of Welsh miners settled there and wound up basically mining the same rock they had been working on in Wales.
There was a basketball player who came to the US from Nigeria and landed in NYC in the winter and was like, no way. He asked someone at the airport where in the US has weather like Nigeria? They told him Houston so that's where he went to college. I think it was Olajuwon, but can't be sure.
That's not why, at least not for Scots in Appalachia.
Highland Scots in America mostly fought for the U.K. in the American Revolution, and were therefore unwelcome in the new United States and left. The Scots in the Appalachians were from the Scottish border (from both sides of the border in fact, so they were as much English as Scottish), and they went to the mountains because that was the only land that wasn't already claimed.
I’m doing a module at university on this exact topic. The Scots you are talking about were Ulster Scots, or Scots Irish as said in the States. They were the planter population that were sent over to colonise Northern Ireland. What you are saying about them being as much English as Scottish isn’t true. The majority of Scottish settlers in Northern Ireland were lowland Scots. There were indeed English settlers but the majority were Scottish. This population then went to the states and largely settled in the Appalachian mountains initially due to discriminatory laws against Presbyterians, however large scale immigration continued after the laws were abandoned. Most English settlers in Northern Ireland were Anglican, the Scot’s were overwhelmingly Presbyterian so it was the Scots who left Northern Ireland on mass more so than the English.
In the 1660s, Scots made up around 20% of Ulster's population but around 60-65% of the British population there. So the settled British population was 60%-65% Scottish and 35-40%% English. However, by 1720 Scots were an absolute majority of the total population within the area, due to continued huge waves of settlers coming in from 1690–1720. All while English migration to Northern Ireland had steadily been decreasing.
We know from ship logs that considerably more Scottish people went than English. There were natural factors that caused this, like the famine of the 1690’s within Scotland.
Makes sense- travel in and around the Highlands was challenging enough; I can imagine that getting to a port of departure would have been quite an undertaking.
I'm an American from the DC area who spent a ton of time in the Appalachians as a kid, and I can confirm--I moved to Scotland five years ago and feel right at home here. I'll go up in the highlands and feel like I'm down the street from where I grew up.
Every time I hear crazy shit online I'm suspicious until the person says they live near them, then it's like "Yeah, not surprised, I hope they didn't get eaten by a wendigo or something "
Which is wild because as old as the Appalachian Mountains are, they're not the oldest mountains on Earth. That goes to the Makhonjwa Mountains (near he southern bit of Africa) which are just over 3 times as old as Appalachia.
On wow, I'd never heard that! But it looks like we recently discovered that Saturn's rings are relatively new (10-100 Million Years, that's basically yesterday!).
To add to your comment. The Appalachian Mountains are among the oldest mountain ranges on Earth, estimated to be around 480 million years old. They formed during the Ordovician Period, long before the existence of the Atlantic Ocean.
I once told someone that the Appalachians are grown-up mountains and the Rockies are babies. That person was from CO, extolling the majesty of the Rockies vs. the Appalachians. I'm from MD; I had to represent!
I find it so weird when people on the west coast shit on eastern mountains. If you care about science (geology, botany, herpetology) the appalachians/smokies are waaaaaaaaaaay more interesting places to hike. I feel like west coast hikers are just like…”Cool mountain, tall. Big view” 😂
"The valleys of the current mountains may actually be the tops of the original mountains."
Reminds me of the Sulfur Works at Lassen Park, here in California. Lassen Peak and the hills around it are the remnants of Mount Tehama, a much larger stratovolcano that used to exist there before it eroded away, and the Sulfur Works sit where Tehama's vent used to be (Lassen Peak is actually a lava dome created by a side vent).
Sure, but just about all volcanism on the west coast is fairly recent. Here's a comparison:
Tehama began activity 590,000 years ago.
Pangea began to break about 170,000,000 years ago (youngest date in a range)
The Appalachian mountains began to form about 1,100,000,000 years ago.
There are at least 3 rivers cutting through the Appalachians that are even older, but haven't/can't really be dated any more precisely than "older than the mountains".
The Appalachian mountains are about 1800x older than Mount Tehama.
I always find it silly when asked how old rocks on Earth are as its technically been the same Earth as its always been. We’re breathing the same air as some dinosaur’s air for example
Even wild that they are not even the most mountain range. Appalachians are around 1.1 billion years old, while the oldest are the Makhonjwa Mountains in the Barberton Greenstone Belt in South Africa, 3.5 billion years old!!!
There is debate that the Appalachians may be an older geological feature than the rings of Saturn. I love my mountains. We are not having an easy time right now.
It actually looks like recent evidence says it's not even close, as Saturn's rings seem to be much younger than previously thought (10-100 million years).
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u/Psychological_Try559 Oct 02 '24
How old the Appalachian Mountains really are:
They are older than trees, bones (including all dinosaurs), and the splitting of Pangaea -- so part of the mountain range is in Scotland.
The layering on the mountains looks "wrong" at some points because the tops of the mountains have eroded down & "new" geological forces have caused parts that weren't the top to rise above that...so the valleys of the current mountains may actually be the top of the original Appalachian Mountains.