Standing at nearly 9,000 meters tall and growing more each day, the Himalayas are the world's largest and also youngest mountain range. It notably includes Mount Everest, which staggers above sea level at 8,850 meters (29,035 feet) high. But a new study shows they might be closer to an adolescent than a child — forming 15 million years prior than was once believed.
It was long held that the Himalayas, which stretch from Afghanistan to Myanmar along the border of China and India, formed between 40 and 50 million years ago when the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates collided. But research published in the journal Nature Geoscience found that before this collision shot up mountainous rock across the region, the Himalayas already stood tall — at about 60% of their height today, said study author Daniel Ibarra, Ph.D., an assistant professor of environmental science at Brown University.
