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    Ology Himalaya

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    Archana Tiwari
    geological history of india

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    The Geologic History and The world’s tallest mountain range has been : forming since the collision of the Indian Structure of the Himalaya iicntinent with Asia 40 fo 50 million years ago Peter Molnar For at least 40 million years, the Indian subcontinent has been penetrating deeper and deeper into the rest of Asia, In the process, it has lifted the Himalaya and the Tibetan plateaut in front of it and squeezed bits and pieces of China and Mongolia out of its way. The Tibetan plateau, the world’s highest and largest, is no mean tribute to the Indian subcontinent’s strength and persistence, but the most spectacular consequence of the collision between the subcontinent and the rest of Asia is the world’s tallest mountain range—the Himalaya Buttressed at its rear by the Tibeian plateau, the mass of rock comprising the Himalaya is constantly forced farther up and onto the plains of India. With each great earthquake, a segment of the Himalaya, perhaps two or three hundred kilometers in length, lurches several meters farther onto the plains; or from another perspective, the Indian subcontinent surges several me- ters more below the Himalaya. Continental collisions of this ma bly not unique to Asia. For at least half of the earth's history, and perhaps longer, continents have split apart, and fragments of them have collided and become su- tured together. The forces pushing the continents invari: ably cause mountain ranges to form along the suture Itis possible that past continental collisions formed mountain ranges that once were higher than the Himala: ya is now; at present we do not know. Moreover, not all mountain ranges are created by continental collisions. Nevertheless, the Himalaya, not o height and its extent but also because of the rates at which it is evolving and the grand scale of the processes controlling it, is becoming a major laboratory for under- standing how collisions’ occur and how they cause mountain belts to arise Approximately 250 million years ago, still long before there was a hint of the Himalaya, most of the continental masses now dispersed over the globe had congealed into one supercontinent, called” Pangaea (Smith et al, 1981). Then, for reasons that we do not fully understand, shortly after 200 million years ago Pangaea nitude are pro! because of its Figure 1. The Himalaya has been forming since the Indian subcontinent collided with Asia some 40 to 50 million years ago. It consists of shavings of the crust thrust up as the rest f the subcontinent’s lithosphere has been subducted beneath southern Tibet. This photograph of the Greater Himalaya, showing Annapurna (8,091 m) on the let and Machhapuchare (6993 m) on the right, was taken from the village of Naudanda, in the northern part of the Lesser Himalaya. Horizontal bands of late Precambrian to early Paleozoic quartztes and slates can be seen below the snow. Annapurna is capped by limestone like that on Mt, Everest, (All photographs are by the author.) 144 American Scientist, Volume 74 began to break into separate fragn large fragments, ments on which we fragment, Gondwana landmasses- and Antarctica Arabia, Madagascar large fragment Greenland, Europe split apart from Laurasia, fragment than it is now ints and later into the di The southern large ncluded the five major southern Africa as well as smaller fragments such as and New Zealand. included jost of Asia, When Gondwana 4 smaller continental not only the Indian subco nent, but also most of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, southern Tibet, and possibly parts of Indochina and southern China formed part of the fringes of Gondwan: and were thousands of kilometers from southern Asia The last 200 million years have witnessed a growth of the Asian landmass by the accretion of small continental fragments that were torn from Gondwana; Asia's nu merous mountain ranges of vastly different ages are testament to the gradual accretion ost of Gondwana’s present fragments contain large expanses of rocks that have not been heated or 120 milion years ago Figure 2. The Indian subcontinent moved northward between about 120 and 40 million years ago, following the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea into two large fragments. India was part of the southern fragment, Gondwana, but it broke off and moved north to join Asia, which had been part of the northem fragment, LLaurasia. Is collision with Asia has formed the Himalaya. The continental shelves of India and Madagascar were stil joined 120 ‘million years ago, and narzow seas separated them from Africa, Antarctica, and Australia (lf?) By 80 million years ago (mda, deformed significantly since the end of the Precambrian era more than 600 million years ago, and thus the litho- sphere beneath these expanses of rock is especially strong. India forms fone such Precambrian shield, which is either exposed or covered by a thin layer of younger material in its cen- tral and southern sections, As we shall see, the great strength of the Indian plate may be partly responsi- ble for the exceptional height of the Himalaya. Although most of the rocks com- prising India’s crust are Precambrian, a sequence of sedimentary rocks was deposited, apparently in a shallow sea, on the northern part of India beginning in the early Paleozoic era, approximately 500 million years ago, or perhaps earlier (Gansser 1964; Le Fort 1975; Thakur 1981), These sedi Peter Minar rcened an AB. i plyscs from Obert College in 1965 ant a Ph.D. from the Department of Geology of Columbia Univesity in 1970 for sefsmalogical studies of plate tectonics He has been a meer ofthe fculty ofthe Department of Earth, Atmespheric, and Pictary Scieces at MIT sine 1974. His research has bee) supported by grants fram the National Science Foundation andthe Nations! Aeronautics and Spuce Administration. Addres: Room 54-726, su, Cambridge, MA 02138, 16 American Scientist, Volume 74 years ago. The compl mentary rocks now show clearly as tilted layers in the high Himalaya, and they cap some of the best-known peaks, such as Everest, Annapurna, Dhaulagiri, and Nanda Devi (Fig. 1). They include limestones metamor- phosed to marble, sandstones meta- morphosed in places to quartzites, shales metamorphosed to slates, and other secimentary rocks typical of deposition in shallow water, in an inland sea or on a continental shelf. The sequence of these rocks does not record any evidence of disruption that might be a forerunner either to a collision or to the creation of a high ‘mountain range. In the 100 million years follow- ing the breakup of Pangaea, most of today’s continents were isolated from one another (Fig. 2). More important for our purposes, between about 200 and 130 million years ago, the fringe of Gondwana that bordered the northern edges of Australia, Indi and Arabia was split from Gondwa- na into a number of small continental fragments, These fragments drifted north to be plastered onto the south- em margin of Asia and eventually shaped “into Iran, Afghanistai northern Pakistan, and southern Ti- bet (Smith et al. 1981) 40 milion years ago India was isolated; between 60 and 40 million years ago, it moved 4,000 to 5,000 km toward Asia (right). Up to the present, i has penetrated about 2,000 km into the rest of Asia. Considerable disruption has occurred in Asia since the col 4rea). Outlines of the Caspian and Black seas are shown for ‘geographical reference, but probably neither sea existed 120 million 2 (right, brown ies of the western Medit anean region ‘are ignored. Dashed lines show presumed former edges of ‘continental fragments. (After Smith etal. 1981.) One of the extraordinary possi- bilities suggested by this transfer of material from Gondwana to Laurasia and the later addition of India to Asia is that the rocks of southern Tibet may have lain next to those of India when both were part of Gondwana, ‘Thousands of kilometers separated them when southern Tibet was ac- creted to Asia, before India drifted north to collide with Tibet. Proving such a divorce and remarriage is a challenge that tantalizes numerous geologists hoping to gain access to Tibet's virtually unstudied geology. In any case, the important point here is that about 200 million years ago, or perhaps a little earlier, a piece was tom off the northern edge of India. Suddenly what had been the interior of a larger Indian subconti- nent was bounded by a deep ocean, which we call Tethys after the wife of Oceanus in Greek mythology. (It was a big ocean: rocks deposited in it are also exposed in Greece.) The evi- dence that a piece of continent was tom from India is provided by Meso- zoic sedimentary rocks that overlie the Paleozoic rocks and differ from them by showing features typical of sediments deposited rapidly and in deep water (Gansser 1964; Le Fort Figure 3, Limestones were deposited on the northern margin of the subcontinent afte 3 fragment had been torn from the subcontinent 130 to 200 million years ago and before the subcon:inent itself separated from Gondwana. A much thicker sequence of sandstones and shales was deposi In the early stages of India’s collision with Asia, the limestones 1975; Bally et al. 1980). The alternat- ing layers of shales, siltstones, and sandstones probably were transport- ed into deep water by occasional turbidity currents, mixtures of sedi- ment and water that flow rapidly downslope, for example from conti nental shelves. Chaotically inter- mixed with these rather fine-grained sedimentary rocks are blocks of older limestone, often as large as houses or even factories, also carried rapidly downslope (Shackleton 1981). More- over, intruded into the sedimentary rocks are basalts, volcanic rocks that are formed during eruptions when the lithosphere is pulled apart and the hot underlying asthenosphere can reach shallow’ depths. Thus, these Mesozoic sedimentary rocks re- cord a history entirely different from that of the older Paleozoic rocks that were deposited under more tranquil conditions, A profile drawn across India 120 million years ago probably would «din deeper water, mountains, have shown Precambrian rocks ex- posed in southern and central Inclia but buried by Paleozoic sedimentary rocks gradually increasing in thick- ness to the north. These Paleozoic rocks in turn would have been over- Jain by the Mesozoic sedimentary rocks deposited on the continental shelf (Fig. 3). The Mesozoic rocks would have reached maximum thick- ness over the adjoining, newly formed oceanic crust and would have gradually thinned seaward (Fig. 4a). India and Madagascar were still attached to one another 120 million years ago, but they had separated from the other fragments of Gor dwana—Africa, Antarctica, and Aus- tralia (Fig. 2). We cannot be sure how far the northern edge of India ex- tended beyond the rocks comprising the foot of the present Himalaya. Because the Himalaya seems to con- sist almost entirely of fragments of India, the minimum is 250 to 300 km, the width of the range. Since collid were folded and thrust southward. This photograph of a limestone formation looks southwest along the Kali Gandaki, a river that ‘crosses the Nepal Himalaya. The high peak of Dhaulagiri (8,172 m) in the background, The foreground lies in the rain-shadow of the Greater Himalaya, the desertlike area on the lee side of the ing with the southern edge of Eur- asia, the northern part of the Indian subcontinent and its margin have undergone a considerable amount of foreshortening, probably at least 300 km and possibly much more. Southern Asia before the collision with India One hundred million years ago, an observer in southern Tibet could have stood on a voleano and looked south over the huge Tethys ocean. Somewhat earlier—probably 120 to 140 million years ago—oceanic litho sphere began to subduct beneath southern Tibet, as shown in Figure 4b (Scharer et al. 1984). When ocean- ic lithosphere is subducted, as it is beneath the Aleutian Islands, Japan, or western South America today, the oceanic plate bends down to form a deep trench and slides beneath the adjoining, overriding plate. Some sediment and even fragments of oce- 1986 March-April 147 ay Paleozoic sedimentary rocks <= continental shalt > continental rise r= Mesozoic sedimentary rocks m deop-seattrench future ophioitic melange forearc basin coast volcanoes and sraniteinicusions| Figure 4, Geological events preceding and following India’s collision with Asia are shown in this sequence of north-south cross sections, In (2), the nother margin of India before the col m is shown. In (b), oceanic In ©), India has collided with and underthrust southern Tibet. In (a, slip on the Main Cente up and onto the intact part of India farther south. In (e, slip on the Main Boundary Fault has brought at least two slivers of India’s northern ‘margin up and onto the cest of India. anic crust and mantle are scraped off the oceanic plate, but most of this material is conveyed into the as- thenosphere with the rest of the lithosphere (Seely et al. 1974) Between the bottom of the trench and the shore, a mélange of overlapping slices of igneous and sedimentary rocks gradually accu- mulates. A frequent rock type in such mélanges is serpentinite, made 148 American Scientist, Volume 74 largely of the mineral serpentine, which results from the metamorpho- sis of basalt, the main rock type in the oceanic crust, in the presence of abundant water. Serpentine usually has a smooth but scaly texture resem bling a snake's skin. The geologic term for such a collection of rocks is ophiolite, from the Greek word for serpent. Probably the beststudied ophiolitic mélange in the world is the thosphere is shown being subducted beneath southern Tibet. ‘Thrust has brought the edge of India Franciscan formation exposed in the ‘Coast Ranges of central and northern California, but the reader ought not be surprised that ophiolitic mé- langes, containing bits and pieces of the Tethys ocean floor, can be found in Greece. Ophiolitic mélange in the Himalaya attests to the former exis- tence of the Tethys ocean thousands of kilometers east of Greece (Nicolas et al. 1981). fer Paleozoic sedimentary rocks ‘Mesozoic soaimentary rocks folded and thrustn overiapping layers: underying magn sides beneath southern tibet melange and forearc basin upiites Byundernrusting continental cast ‘material eroded trom high areas volcanism ceases when Incia begins to underthrust ar deposition of Siwalk group back thusting caries torearc basin andmelange northwarg onto Granites ol southern Tibet position of Kallas seaiments: eroded voleanic and granitic rock Mesozoic and Paleozoic sedimentary rocks Uplited and eroded folsing of Swati grou Fititayan ent 10 Ter 7 Indo-Gangetic plains Lesser Himalaya Greater Himalaya Tethys Himalaya Transhimalaya ‘rapid uplit at Himalayan rant ‘erosion has lft high mountains fandin Greater Himalaya sliphas placed ‘and deep valleys in Tathys Himalaya| highly matamorphosed rocks ‘nd Trarshimalay ily metamorphoses acer! Paleozoic sedimentary rocks —_Jndus-Tsangpo suture zone. ain rs 1986 March-April 1” INDO- GANGETIC INDIA Figure 5. Suturing the two great landimasses of India and Asia, the Himalaya forms a natural barrier between the two most populous ‘countries in the world, China and India, As material is scraped from the ocean floor, it is wedged under the lower parts of the mélange, so as to uplift the upper parts (Fig. 4b). The uplifted mélange forms a low ridge seaward of the continent and thus creates a so-called forearc basin, in which sediments eroded from ‘the neighboring continent are deposited. A pile of sandstones, shales, and mixtures of sediment with various grain sizes and compositions often accumulates in such basins. A partic ularly good example is the Great Val ley formation between the Sierra Ne- vada and the Coast Ranges in California. These sediments were de- posited when ocean lithosphere was subducted beneath western North ‘America and the Franciscan mélange was formed. Similar deposits accu- mulated on the southern edge of Tibet. Subduction of oceanic litho- sphere is nearly always associated with a belt of volcanoes parallel to the deep-sea trench and 150 to 250 km from it. The “ring of fire” surround- ing the Pacific Ocean consists of such volcanoes. Mount St. Helens, for in- stance, is associated with the subduc tion of a small plate of oceanic litho- sphere beneath the coast of northern 150 American Scientist, Volume 74 California, Oregon, and Washing- ton. Beneath some of these volcanoes are huge masses of granite that have intruded into the crust but have failed to be expelled in volcanic erup- tions. The volcanoes erode rapidly, so that often only the granite is ex- posed, as in much of the Sierra Neva- da. Only the northem Sierra is still covered by volcanic rocks. Southern Tibet is likewise marked by a vast expanse of granite, 2,500 km in length, from east of Lhasa to west of Ladakh (Fig. 5), laid bare by the erosion of the volcanoes that stood above it (Scharer et al. 1984). The eroded material has not all disap- peared, however. ‘The high moun- fain in southern Tibet sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists, Kailas, con- sists of debris eroded largely’ from these volcanoes and deposited near them (Gansser 1964), Then further erosion sculpted the deposits into the mountain as we know it, Collision between India and Eurasia By 80 million years ago, India had separated from Madagascar (Fig. 2), and by 60 million years ago, it was moving rapidly northward. toward Eurasia. From about 65 to 50 million years ago, it moved 15 to 20 cm per year (Molnar and —Tapponnier 1975}very fast among geologic rates, compared for instance with the rate of 2 to 4 cm per year at which Europe and North America have moved apart. Then, between 40 and 50 million years ago, the rate de- creased abruptly to a relatively con- stant 5 cm per year, the rate at which India continues to penetrate into the rest of Asia The abrupt slowdown is almost surely a consequence of the collision. Because of its thin crust, oceanic lithosphere consists mostly of cold mantle material, which is dense enough to be subducted easily. Con- juently, it not only carries the thin, it crust into the asthenosphere, but it also pulls on the rest of the material still at the earth’s surface. Continental lithosphere, with a rela tively thick coating of crust, appears to be more resistant to subduction than is oceanic lithosphere. Probably India’s speed decreased at the time when it collided with southern Tibet, as the thick, buoyant crust of India resisted subduction. For Indian litho- sphere to continue to be subducted, it was necessary to shave some of its crust off; those shavings are what now comprise the Himalaya. Proving conclusively that the collision did occur between 40 and 50 million years ago, or perhaps a little earlier, has been an elusive task. Two pieces of data suggest collision some- time between 40 and 55 or 60 million years ago. First, the latest marine Sediments found as yet in the Indus- Tsangpo suture zone (Fig. 5) are about 55 million years old (Powell and Conaghan 1973). Hence, an ‘ocean, albeit probably shallow and narrow, persisted at least until this time. Second, mammals, which be- gan to evolve rapidly on many conti- nents about 65 million years ago, do not seem to have evolved indepen- dently on India. As we have seen, India was isolated from other conti nental fragments between 80 million years ago and the time of the colli- sion. Sedimentary rocks deposited in India contain fossil mammals that are not older than about 45 million years, and these mammals apparently came from Mongolia Sahni and Kumar 1974), Evidently the - Mongolian mammals did not face the physio- graphic obstacles that stalled Gen- ghis Khan's armies, Until about 45 million years ago, however, an ocean too wide to be swum must have provided a moat around India. A more accurate date for the collision must await further study, but regard- less of whether it occurred 40, 50, or 60 million years ago, ata rate of 5 cm/ yr India must have penetrated at least 2,000 km and perhaps 3,000 km into Eurasia since the collision When the Indian subcontinent reached the southern margin of Ti- bet, it followed the oceanic litho- sphere in front of it beneath the ophiolitic mélange and the forearc basin (Fig, 4c). We cannot yet deter- mine how far India plunged beneath ‘Tibet—whether 1,000 km beneath all of Tibet or only a few hundred kilom- eters beneath southern Tibet—but we do know that at least some of India’s penetration into the rest of Asia has been absorbed both by squashing Tibet and by wedging southeast China out of its way (Mol- nar and Tapponnier 1975). Before the collision, the southern coast of Asia probably followed a relatively smooth line from Sumatra to what is now southwestem Pakistan and southern Iran (Fig. 2). Careful paleo: magnetic work shows that India has Figure 6, Where the Main Central Thrust crops out below the Greater Himalaya, rocks have been severely deformed. This photograph shows a stack of sheared rocks dipping north in the Thrust zone, The view is to the west up a side stream of the Kali Gandaki Figure 7. The Gumbar Thrust, south of Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh, India, reflects the continuing convergence between India and the Himalaya. As India has moved north the fine-grained sediments of the Lower Siwalik group, which were deposited 10 to 15, million years ago, have been thrust some 4 km up and perhaps 10 km southward onto the conglomerates of the Upper Siwalik group, which were deposited a few million years ago, 1986 March-April 151 Figure 8. The relatively gentle opograph shown in Fig of the Lesser Himalaya, so difer 1, is accounted for by the relatively gentle incline of the fault plate underneat from the steep eys and sharp peaks of the Greater Himalaya This photograph was taken looking south southwest along the Alaknanda River, north of Deyprayag, where the Alaknanda joins the Bhagiathi River to form the Ganga, pushed southern Tibet 1,500 to 2,000 km north to its present latitude since the collision (Achache et al. 198: Most rocks south of the ophioli- tic mélange, found now along, the Indus and Tsangpo river valleys of southern Tibet (Fig. 5), were part of the Indian continent and its margin, but those to the north have been part of Asia and its margin for 100 million years or more. The only exceptions are fragments of mélange that now overlie Mesozoic sedimentary rocks of India’s former northern margin some 50 km south of the Indus- Tsangpo suture zone in Ladakh, In- dia, “and in southernmost Tibet (Gansser 1964; Fuchs 1979; ark 1983), Before erosion removed most of the mélange, therefore, the Indian continental shelf probably extended 50 km beneath the mélange and fore arc basin of southem Tibet. By similar logic we also can be sure that the old continental margin 152 American Scientist, Volume 74 of India could not have been un- derthrust intact much more than 100 km beneath the southern margin of Tibet. The rocks deposited in the thys ocean on India’s ancient shelf are now preserved in what is called the Tethys Himalaya, the portion north of the High Himalaya and south of the Indus-Tsangpo suture zone (Fig, 5). Were India’s margin subducted more than about 100 km beneath southern Tibet, we would not see these rocks at all, for they would lie deep beneath the granitic belt of southern Tibet, What is difficult to estimate is the extent to which the sedimentary rocks of India’s northern margin raped off the rest of India and then thrust on top of one another. It is possible that the deeper parts of northern India’s crust, stripped of their blanket of sedimentary rock (Fig, 3), did penetrate beneath south- ern Tibet more than 100 km. Formation of the Himalaya Sometime after the northern margin of India slid beneath the southern in of Tibet, important in the history of the Himalaya occurred. Apparently India’s entire margin, including the deformed Mesozoic sedimentary rocks on the continental shelf, the Paleozoic rocks beneath them, and part of the Pre cambrian_ metamorphic complex of the middle and possibly of the lower crust, was scalped from the leading as the rest of India slipped beneath it and southern Tibet (Fig, 4c). The fault separating this slice and the rest of India is called the Main Central Thrust (Gansser. 1964; Mat- tauer 1975; Valdiya 1980). At this time the suturing of India to the rest of Asia was completed, but India continued to penetrate into Asia. The northern edge of the Indian plate jumped south from the Inclus-Tsang- po suture zone to the Main Central Thrust within the Indian subconti- nent itself. As slip on the Main Cen- tral Thrust carried India beneath a slice of its former northern margin, this slice was uplifted and partially eroded. Inclia must have slipped at least 100 km, and perhaps much more, along the Main Central Thrust be- neath the sliver of its northern mar- gin and beneath southern Tibet. This, fault can be recognized just south of the Greater Himalaya at many loca- tions in Nepal and India (Fig. 5), where very highly metamorphosed rocks, which have undergone high pressures and temperatures charac teristic of the deep parts of the crust, overlie only weakly metamorphosed rocks (Le Fort 1975; Valdiya 1980) High-grade metamorphic rocks also crop out 100 km south of the Greater Himalaya, near the southern edge of the Lesser Himalaya (Gansser 1968; Valdiya 1981), for example in the Mahabharat in southern Nepal (Stocklin. 1980). There they overlie either lower-grade metamorphic rocks or unmeiamorphosed rocks. A thin sheet of high-grade metamor phic rocks stripped from the north- ern edge of India apparently once overlay most of what is now the Lesser Himalaya; the central portion of this sheet has subsequently erod- ed, exposing rocks that lay near the surface of India’s crust before the sheet was thrust over them. The few remnants of these high-grade rocks in places like the Mahabharat allow’ us to infer that at least 100 km of slip occurred on the Main Central Thrust (Gansser 1964; Sticklin 1980; Valdiya 1981), and possibly much more (Powell and Conaghan 1973) The Main Central Thrust, where it crops out below the Greater Hima- laya, influences the landscape pro- foundly. Most of the rocks were se- verely deformed while slip occurred, and thus the simplicity of geologic structures that characterizes the flat layers of rock in the Grand Canyon or the folds in the Allegheny moun tains of Pennsylvania is not found in the Himalaya. The Main Central Thrust is a subtle and diffuse bound- ary marked by changes in the degree ‘of metamorphism that may elude the untrained eye. It is not a clearly de- fined plane separating two different Kinds of rocks but instead isa wide zone of ten or more kilometers where all of the rocks have been severely sheared. Sides of valleys and mo tains appear as stacks of rock sheets, as shown in Figure 6, millimeters to meters in thickness and dipping to the north or northeast at angles of to 45°. Each sheet has apparently slid over the one below it. One imagines taking a deck of cards 10 km thick and trying to push it under a door- way 9 km above the floor. The mag- nificent roofing slates, often more than a square meter in area and only a few centimeters thick, that keep the rain out of houses built along the northern edge of the Lesser Himala- ya are one of the Main Central Thrust’s products used by the hill people of the Himalaya, The tenden- cy that these sheets have to detach from one another and cause land- slides, however, is the price paid for such splendid roofing material. The careful observer can recog- nize the transition from low-grade ‘metamorphic rocks below the Main Central Thrust to high-grade rocks, which once lay deep in the crust below the northern margin of India and now lie above the Main Central Thrust, by the appearance of large gamets, sometimes several millime- ters long, and fibrous, pale blue kya- nite crystals, which range up to a centimeter or two. Formed at high pressures, these minerals have been uplifted by slip on the Main Central ‘Thrust and then exposed by the ero- sion of 10 km or more of overlying, material. At some unknown time after the slice of India’s northern edge was detached from it along the Main Cen- tral Thrust, both this slice and the southern margin of Tibet were folded. and faulted considerably (Fig. 4c). As a result, the southern margin of Tibet has been considerably contracted. Whereas the distances between the mélange zone and the volcanic and granitic belts in active or well-pre- served subduction zones (such as those adjacent to the Andes or in California) are typically 100 to 200 km, the forearc basin and the mé- lange in southern Tibet are each less than 20 km wide (Burg and Chen 1984), except for the few outliers of ophiolite, noted above, 50 km farther south. Thus probably 50 to 100 km of crustal shortening occurred within the old southern margin of Asia Between about 10 and 20 million years ago, the Main Central Thrust apparently ceased being an active fault, and a new fault, the Main Boundary Fault, formed as India’s northward motion sliced off another piece (Fig. 4d), The Main Boundary Fault follows the southern edge of the Lesser Himalaya (Fig. 5). It sepa- rates the Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary rocks deposited on In- dia before the collision from younger sediments created by erosion of the Himalaya, which now cover the broad Indo-Gangetic plains (Fig. 4e). on the Main Boundary Fault carries the rest of India beneath a package of rocks that now includes two slices of India’s former northern margin plus the ophiolitic mélange thrust on top of it. (From the oppo- site but equally valid perspective, this package of rocks is being, thrust over the rest of India.) India’s slippage beneath the sliv ers of its northern edge has further thickened the crust of the Himalaya, whose rocks have been forced up and onto the nearly flat surface of India, The weight of the Himalaya has bent the Indian plate to a depth of 4 to 5 km, forming the broad, shallow Ganga basin "(Lyon-Caen and Molnar 1983, 1985). ‘The Indo- Gangetic plains, where the Indus and Ganga rivers flow south of the Himalaya, cover the basin, and as the Himalaya has continued to override India, it has folded and faulted the sedimentary rocks at its foot, at the northern edge of the plains (Fig. 7) ‘These rocks are called the Siwa- lik group, after the Siwalik Hills, which form the crest of a fold in the rocks extending northwest from the Hindu holy city of Hardwar, near the place where the Ganga leaves. the Himalaya (Fig. 5). The Siwalik Hills were named for Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, and the Siwalik group provides ample evidence of the destruction of the Himalaya. The youngest of the sediments are a con- glomerate of pebbles and boulders, centimeters to tens of centimeters in dimension, derived from all eleva- tions of the Himalaya and rounded smooth during their turbulent trans- port down streams and rivers. The rivers drop the pebbles and boulders when they debouch from the moun- tains onto the plains, but they carry silt and sand farther south. Only a small fraction of the material eroded from the Himalaya has been deposit- 1985 March-April 153 ed in the Ganga basin; most of it has been carried by the Brahmaputra, Ganga, and Indus rivers to the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. The Ganga basin is not unique: the Molasse basin of northwestern Switzerland bears a relationship to the neighboring Alps similar to that which the Ganga basin bears to the Himalaya. The dimensions of the Ganga basin, however, are unusual. If the Indian plate were not as strong, as it is, the basin would be narrower and deeper, and the Himalaya proba- bly would also be lower. The weight of the Himalaya thrust onto a weak plate would depress it so that a range of only modest height would form. Thus, the strength of India’s litho- sphere plays a key role in making the Himalaya as majestic as it is. Active tectonics of the Himalaya Our image of how the Himalaya is developing at present includes a strong Indian plate, flexed down by the weight of the Himalaya and slid- ing beneath slivers of crust that once ‘were part of India’s northern margin. The fault plane dips at a gentle angle of only a few degrees beneath the Lesser Himalaya, whose rocks appar- ently slide over a surface that once was the top of India, where plants grew and animals walked (Seber et al, 1981; Baranowski et al. 1984; Ni and Barazangi 1984). As the Indian plate is flexed down, the Ganga basin deepens, but its deepest part, just south of the range, is continually overthrust by the advancing Himala- ya. Moreover, as the basin deepens, erosion of the Himalaya provides a steady supply of new debris to keep it filled. At the northern edge of the basin, the Siwalik sediments are plowed into folds and thrust on top ‘of one another and are overthrust by the older rocks of the Lesser Himala- ya, making the southern front of the Himalaya rise abrupily above the Indo-Gangetic plains. The gentle an- gle at which India underthrusts the Lesser Himalaya, however, probably is responsible for the relatively slow uplift of the Lesser Himalaya and therefore for some of the uncharac- teristically gentle topography of the Himalaya (Fig. 8), such as in the broad Kathmandu basin, The Main Boundary Fault seems to steepen be- neath the Greater Himalaya, and consequently this portion of the Hi- 154 American Scentist, Volume 74 malaya rises rapidly as India is pushed or pulled under it. The ex traordinary wall of mountains of the Greater Himalaya, cut only by rare steep canyons, is probably a result of this rapid uplift, perhaps as much as Tm per year, outpacing erosion, What is most amazing is that the processes that built the Himalaya continue unabated. Insofar as we can measure it, the rate of India’s pene- tration into the rest of Asia—about 5 cm per year—has persisted for 40 million years. We cannot know whether the fraction of this rate ab- sorbed at the Himalaya has also been constant, In any case, the roughly annual moderate earthquake and the rarer, but all too frequent, great earthquakes attest to continued, if episodic, slippage. Thus we can be confident that future generations will have the Himalaya to behold, but we also should expect the range to evolve. Probably another slice even- tually will be taken from India and added to the front of the Himalaya. Apparently only three large slices exist now in the Himalaya, but five have been recognized in the Caledo- nian mountain belt of Norway and ‘Sweden, which formed in the early Paleozoic era. In fact, were India to continue its penetration for several more tens of millions of years, the entire subcontinent might be re- duced to a stack of crustal slices, which like all old mountain ranges would slowly erode away. Regard- less, even at the rate that the Brah- maputra, Ganga, and Indus rivers carty the Himalaya away, the mecha- nisms for regenerating its relief seem to be functioning reliably References Achache, J. V- Courillot, and 2. Y. Liu. 1984 Paleographic and tectonic. evolution of southern Tibet since middle ‘Cretaceous time: New palsomagnetic data and synthe sis. - Geophys. Res. AO3LI-AL Bally, A. W., etal 1980. Nees on the Gooey of Tibet aud Adjacent Aras —Repart of the Aer ca Plate Tetons Delegation to the People's Republic of Chie. USCS Open-File Rep. B0- xi Baranowski, J, J. Armbruster, L. Seeber, and Molnar. 1884." Focal depths and. fault plane solitons of earthquakes and active tectonies of the Himalaya, J. Goopys. Res, 5:98.28. Burg, J. P., and G. M, Chen, 1984, Tectonics ‘and structural zonation of southern Tibet, China, Nature 311:219-23, Fuchs, G. 1979. On the geology of western Ladakh, Jari der Gonggschen Buns silt 1222):513-40 Gansser, A. 1964. Goolegy of the Hinulayas Wiley“Interscience Le Fort, P. 1975. Himalayas: The collided range Present knowledge ofthe continental arc, Am. J Sc, 2738:1-44 Lyon-Caen, H., and P, Molnar, 1983, Con- Saints on the structure of the Himalaya from an analysis of gravity anomalies and a flexural model ofthe lithosphere. J. Gaps Res, BEBIZI-SI. 1985, Gravity anomalies, flexure of the Indian plate, and the structure, support and evolution of the Himalaya and Ganga basin. Tectonics 4513-38, Mattauer, M. 1975, Sur le mécanisme de for- ‘mation de la schistacité dans Himalaya arth Panet, Sci Lett. 28:144-54, Molnar, P..and P. Tapponaier. 1975. Cenozo Jc tectonics of Asia: Efects of a continental collision. Sconce 189819-26 Ni, J, and M. Barazangi. 1984. Seismotecton ‘cs ofthe Himalayan collision zone: Geome- tay of the underthrusting Indian plate be- neath the Himalaya. -[. Gaypiys. Res Be:1132-46, Nicolas, A., et al. 1981, The Xigaze ophiolite (Tibet: A peculiar oceanic lithosphere. Ni- fuye 4414-17 Powell, C.M,, and P. . Conaghan, 1973, Plate tectonics and the Himalayas. Earth Plane! Sei. Let, 20:1-12. Sahni, A., and V. Kumar. 1974, Palacogene palaeobiogeography ofthe Indian sub-

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