CompuServe Messages

Kamron >>Howard has told you how th craton may not be compressed, but I am looking at the crust as a whole. As the slop (geosyncline) you have been talking about is pushed atop the craton, I expect the craton is forced down to gain buoyancy to support the mountains; if the collision is fierce enough, I expect the craton to crumple and shorten also, which is my guess for the Himalayas.<< The Himalayas do look like they were formed by an impact by India. It is hard to mentally simulate this type of event accurately but again it appears like the results were caused by a rapid event rather than a slow steady process. If there is no real speed then the inertia required to smash and compress is not there. If we look at the continent of india smashing at a faster pace it is much easier to see the heat and forces necessary to accomplish the compression and folding. A slow motion would get resisted and I still have not heard a mechanism to produce the forces necessary to overcome the resistance that a 25 mile thick granitic block could absorb. >>Fault block mountains have roots too, though they are created differently. Over time, I expect any mountain without a "float" underneath would simply sink into the crust, faster than it could erode.<< I agree >>It did not transfer back much if any; a good part of the Appalachians formed where two coasts came together as Pangaea was assembling, but they were not today's coasts; new coasts were cut by the later spreading that split N. America from W. Africa. Land between the Appalachians and the east coast was largely part of Africa before Laurentia (the predecessor of N. America) hit Africa while Pangaea was being assembled.<< Ok I can bite off on that..a bit anyway. There is an excellent match between the east coast of N. America and the northern part of the eastern African Coast. What evidence is there that this eastern US coast was separated from the the rest of the Continent? Kamron