The Somalayas are the biggest mountain range you will never see

Every geography schoolbook has them: maps that look like today's Earth, but not quite, since all continents are merged into a single supercontinent. Those maps were used to explain why dinosaurs in South America and Africa, ...

The downs and ups of mountain building

In the D'Entrecasteaux Islands off Papua New Guinea, the rocks are giving rise to new ideas about the ways in which mountain chains form. A new scientific model inspired by data from the islands shows how the seemingly opposite ...

The North American Cordillera: Constructive collisions

The mountain ranges of the North American Cordillera are made up of dozens of distinct crustal blocks. A new study clarifies their mode of origin and identifies a previously unknown oceanic plate that contributed to their ...

Curvy mountain belts

Mountain belts on Earth are most commonly formed by collision of one or more tectonic plates. The process of collision, uplift, and subsequent erosion of long mountain belts often produces profound global effects, including ...