Geology[edit]

The Indian subcontinent lies atop the Indian tectonic plate, a minor plate within the Indo-Australian
Plate.[24] Its defining geological processes commenced seventy-five million years ago, when, as a
part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana, it began a northeastwards drift—lasting fifty million
years—across the then unformed Indian Ocean.[24] The subcontinent's subsequent collision with
the Eurasian Plate and subduction under it, gave rise to the Himalayas, the planet's highest
mountain ranges.[24] In the former seabed immediately south of the emerging Himalayas, plate
movement created a vast trough, which, having gradually been filled with sediment borne by
the Indus and its tributaries and the Ganges and its tributaries,[25] now forms the Indo-Gangetic Plain.
[26]

The Indo-Gangetic Plain is geologically known as a foredeep or foreland basin.[27]