Twitter Thread: The Appalachians Are Older Than Most Things

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Eric Lund
Jul 31, 2021 2:00 PM EDT

Like this tumblr thread on the age of the Appalachians says, those mountains are older than bones. Not individual bones, but like the advent of bones. Alex Petrovnia gets into the geological wonder of a mountain range that spans continents and eras. It's weird how sometimes the most mundane things can be extremely interesting, like this thread on lobsters orthe electric story on the naming of Triscuits.

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  • 01
    Font - Alex (he/him) is fighting for... · @AlexPetrovnia ... Have you ever wondered why we don't find fossils in the Appalachian mountains? The truth is, we do, they're just not the kind of fossils you might think of-there are no mammals, no dinosaurs, no reptiles. There's something else entirely. 09:33 · 7/15/21 · Twitter for iPhone
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 02
    Product - Alex (he/him) is fightin... 11h ... Replying to @AlexPetrovnia See, the Appalachian mountains are old. Yes, all mountains are old, but the Appalachian mountains are *incomprehensibly old*. They mostly look like this, which leads a lot of people to say they're pretty lame, as far as mountains go. They aren't dramatic.
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 03
    Slope - Alex (he/him) is fighting for... @AlexPetrovnia ... For those unaware, the Appalachian mountain range extends over what is now the eastern US, reaching up into Canada. Great Appalachian Valley Piedmont Greens Blue Ridge and northern highlands Ridge & Valley Taconics Great Valley Helderberg Shawangunk Kittatinny Des Appalachian Plateaus Adirondacks Blue Reading Prong Escarpments & Ridge mountains South Mtn North Blue Ridge Valleys 1. Champlain Valley 2. Mohawk Valley 3. Hudson Valley 4. K
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 04
    Font - Alex (he/him) is fighting for... @AlexPetrovnia ... But many people don't realize that the same original mountain chain also reaches to *Europe*. Wait, what? How is that possible? This is possible because plate tectonics separated this mountain range. The Appalachian Mountains are older than the Atlantic Ocean.
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 05
    Ecoregion - Caledonian Mountains North America British Isles Scandinavia Appalachian Mountains Africa South America А. Greenland Europe North America Africa South America В. 09:42 · 7/15/21 · Twitter for iPhone
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 06
    Product - Alex (he/him) is fighting for... @AlexPetrovnia ... In fact, the Appalachian mountains are 480 million years old. For context, that's about 100 million years before the first animals walked on land. millions of years ago 4,000 2,500 541 500 450 Hadean Archean Proterozoic Paleozoic Eoarchean Mesoarchean Paleoproterozoic Neoproterozoic Cambrian Ordovician Silurian Neoarchean Mesoproterozoic algae Paleoarchean first living organisms-bacteria first animal traces and algae first land plants
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 07
    Head - Alex (he/him) is fighti... - 10h - Replying to @AlexPetrovnia ... So the vast majority of the fossils found in the Appalachian mountains are from when all life lived in the oceans. And that produces some strange results that may not even look like fossils to the untrained eye. Here you can see some shells of ancient marine organisms.
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 08
    Natural material - Alex (he/him) is fighti... · 10h Some other fossils (showing how ancient these organisms really are) that you can see in Appalachia are things like this coral, preserved so well you can ... see the individual structures.
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 09
    Plant - Alex (he/him) is fighti... · 10h ·.. Perhaps most famously, you may have heard of these guys. Although their fossils are found in many places, they are especially famous in the Appalachian region because they are especially prolific here. These are trilobites.
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 10
    Plant - Alex (he/him) is fighting for... @AlexPetrovnia ... The majority of the fossils in this region are so old that they come from limestone rocks, formed on the bottom of the ocean, when life as we know it hadn't yet evolved. Some of these fossils date back as far as the Ordovician period, which is before FISH evolved. 09:57 · 7/15/21 · Twitter Web App
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 11
    Water - Alex (he/him) is fighting for... @AlexPetrovnia ... There are examples of some of the oldest known fossils of life on earth here -- stromatolites. These are fossilized mats of bacteria that still exist today. They show up in the fossil record as a variety of forms, as shown here. They still exist on earth today (photo on right).
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 12
    Font - Alex (he/him) is fighting for.... @AlexPetrovnia ... But let's get back to the mountains themselves. 480 million years old. What does that *mean*? The gentle rolling terrain of Appalachia may have once been as high as the Himalayan mountains are today. Erosion is slow, but unrelenting. 10:05 · 7/15/21 · Twitter Web App
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 13
    Vertebrate - Replying to @AlexPetrovnia The Himalayan mountains are being formed by the Indian subcontinent crashing into the greater Asian continent. The Appalachian mountains were formed by *more than one* of these gigantic, continent sized mountain building events. INDIA Today 10 million years ago SRI LANKA 38 million years ago -Equator 55 million years ago INDIAN OCEAN 71 million years ago "INDIA" Land mass
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 14
    Font - Alex (he/him) is fighti... 10h - In general, it's agreed that there are three distinct periods of the Appalachian mountain's formation, the Taconian, the Acadian and the Alleghanian. These each represent the existing mountain range being subjected to additional ... pressures and forced ever higher. 200- Atlantic Rifting TRIASSIC PERMIAN ALLEGHANIAN 300- PENNSYLVANIAN MISSISSIPPIAN DEVONIAN ACADIAN 400- SILURIAN TACONIAN ORDOVICIAN 500- CAMBRIAN lapetus Rifting EDIACARAN MILLIONS OF YEARS
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 15
    Facial expression - Alex (he/him) is fighting for... .. @AlexPetrovnia The first, the Taconian Orogeny (mountain forming event, yes geologists say this with a straight face), actually absorbed a tiny subcontinental mountain range, known as the Taconic Range. Ordovician paleogeography Siberia Laurentia 30 60 Exotic terranes 60 Baltica Southem Great South pole Eastem North Britain 60 Subductiog pone America Gondwanaland Glaciers EARIY ORDOVICIAN MIDDLE ORDOVICIAN LATEST ORDOVICIAN 10:20 · 7/15/21·
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 16
    Map - Alex (he/him) is fighti... · 10h Replying to @AlexPetrovnia ... The second, the Acadian, had a similar effect, where a chain of islands crashed into what was then the supercontinent of Laurussia. 380 million years ago Laurussia Equator Rheic Ocean Iberia, etc
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 17
    Map - @AlexPetrovnia The third and final orogeny, the Alleghenian, was the largest, where the supercontinents of Gondwana and Laurentia crashed into each other head on. This event also tacked Florida and the Gulf Coast onto the North American Continent. ate Early Carboniferous Early Late Carboniferous Laurentia Clastic wedge Narragansett basin Laurentia Clastic wedge C Reguibat Promontory Lackawanna Reguibat Promontory Ouachitas Ouachitas Gondwana Gondwana Middle Late Carboniferous Early Permian
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 18
    Nature - Alex (he/him) is fighting for... . @AlexPetrovnia •.. These multiple mountain forming events, and the forces the mountains were under, is what created many of the gorgeous rock layering in the Appalachian region, often visible in roadcuts.
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 19
    Vertebrate - Alex (he/him) is fighting for.... @AlexPetrovnia ... You can see in these roadcuts where different layers of very different rock (brought together from all over the world) were stretched and blended like putty. Synclinal ridge Anticlinal Fold valley Overturned Thrust fault Axis of anticline axis anticline Horizontal plane Anticline Plunge Syncline Fault plane 10:30 · 7/15/21· Twitter Web App
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 20
    Vertebrate - Alex (he/him) is fighting for... @AlexPetrovnia ... It's actually visible in some regions to the naked eye in aerial photos. Appalachian Plateau Pennsylvania Salient Appalachian Piedmont Atlantic Goastal Plain 25 km 10:36 · 7/15/21· Twitter Web App
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 21
    Font - Alex (he/him) is fighting for... @AlexPetrovnia ... The very forces that led to these mountains being so unique -- blended and formed by multiple different events, from material from multiple continents -- - has created the rolling landscape we see today, hundreds of millions of years later. Some rocks are more durable than others. 10:39 · 7/15/21· Twitter Web App
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 22
    Font - The mountains were structured with caps of more durable sandstone overtop of layers of soft limestone underneath. Once the sandstone was breached, it allowed those portions to erode much faster. Ironically, the mountains today stand where ancient valleys were located. Cracks formed during folding allowed streams to cut through sandstone into softer limestone and shale beneath, which then eroded rapidly, turning the old mountains into valleys and leaving the old valleys as mountains. Nitta
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 23
    Font - Alex (he/him) is fighting for... @AlexPetrovnia .. This is reflected back on the landscape in dramatic ways. The mountains are built of sandstone, and covered in forests. The majority of the limestone valleys -- which are full of fertile soils, good for farming, are occupied with farms and towns. This is central Pennsylvania. Paod
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 24
    Font - Alex (he/him) is fightin... 9h - Replying to @AlexPetrovnia •.. The unique geology of the Appalachians also created, under immense pressures, the coal seams that are so famous in this region. In fact, many cultural components of Appalachia, as in many places, can be traced through the geology of the place. L7 80 2,711 Alex (he/him) is fightin.. 9h - What I love about geology is ... that, over the timescales required, absolutely every aspect, every particle of soil, is a miracle of chance
    via AlexPetrovnia
  • 25
    Smile - Alex (he/him) is fightin... 9h -- *One quick note! There ARE ... fossils from more recent eras that have been found in the Appalachians, in younger layers. These include vertebrates, mammals, and yes, at least one dinosaur -- Appalachiosaurus. Thank you to @anthro_andrew for updating me on this! O 16 27 77 3,229 1
    via AlexPetrovnia

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