Picturesque and memorable pictures of mountains with snow-capped peaks, bare rocks and slopes covered with forests are able to interest in their diversity. The question involuntarily arises of how to determine how many years they exist. And which mountains are the oldest in the world? A photo of the oldest of them, as well as their description, is presented in this article.
Features of old mountains
Those formations that correspond to several characteristics can be considered as such. First of all, there are no processes going on inside the oldest mountains in the world. They have been quiet for centuries. Now, figuratively speaking, they are not growing, but, on the contrary, under the influence of external factors, they are being destroyed, becoming smaller and smaller. The relief of such formations is smoothed, not contrasting, smoothly passing from one type to another. In addition, the old mountains do not have sharp slopes and strong elevation changes. The mountain rivers that exist on them are by no means spontaneous - the valleys have clearly formed over the past centuries.
Brightexamples of the oldest mountains in the world are the Ural, Yenisei Ridge, Timan, Scandinavian and Khibiny on the Kola Peninsula. Some of them will be discussed below.
Pencil
The Ural Mountains represent a chain that stretches over a distance of 2,600 km. Due to relief differences and a large extent, the Ural Mountains have a huge variety of vegetation and animals that live here, which are located in the part that suits them, where the climate is most suitable for certain representatives of the fauna.
One of the most ancient mountains of the Ural chain is Karandash, a formation that appeared 4.2 billion years ago. Information about this mountain is interesting not only because it is one of the oldest mountains in the world. What features does it have? The mountain is distinguished by the fact that its top and base are composed of israndite. This is the rarest stone, in composition closer to the earth's mantle. It is practically non-existent anywhere else in the world. Today, the composition of the earth's crust is very different from israndite, which makes Pencil unique precisely because of this quality.
Due to the influence of the environment, which irreversibly destroys all the oldest mountains in the world, the height of Pencil today is only 600 m. like a black stone. This fully corresponds to the appearance of the breed.
Mystery Canada
The presence of such ancient formations is indeedremained a mystery for a long time, but then scientists calculated the age of the rocks located near the village of Nuvvuagittuk. They turned out to be about 4.3 billion years old. One of the oldest mountains in the world was named after the Eskimo village, located next to the rocks. The breed, like that of Mount Pencil, is considered rare. It is called tonalin and looks like quartz.
Besides, igneous rock is not the only basis. Near Nuvvuagittuq there is a large number of volcanic rocks. Not all scientists agree on the age of the mountains, and therefore, there is still controversy regarding this moment. Therefore, it is not possible to extract plausible information.
Scandinavian Mountain System
This is a system of mountain formations, "embracing" the entire Scandinavian Peninsula. Previously, it was a whole ridge. But over time, many plateaus have formed, which now replace the once-pointed impressive cliffs.
The time of formation is not known for certain. According to various sources, it varies from 4.8 to 3.9 million years. It is only known for sure that the ridge began to form in the Caledonian era. On average, the height of the plateaus is now no more than 1000 m.
When the continents were not yet formed, ice tongues reached the territories of modern North America, Great Britain and Spintsbergen. Later, ice from above significantly changed the mountain range: continuously acting on them, it contributed to a significant decrease in height, erosion of slopes and formationU-shaped depressions. Now granite fragments can be found far from Scandinavia.
Where can I find out the age
To understand which mountains are the oldest in the world, a variety of rock research methods help. For example, you can roughly determine the age of certain rock layers - the further they lie, the older, and vice versa. There is a paleontological method based on the identification of age from the remains of extinct animals.
Another method is uranium-lead. It consists in calculating the age of the oldest igneous rocks, however, it should take into account where the oldest mountains in the world are located, to which this method will be applied.
The article only talked about a few possible ways to calculate age. There are quite a lot of such methods that allow us to understand whether mountains are long-lived or whether they have formed recently. Exploring the planet, scientists continue to discover new details about its origin.
