Origins of Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 41

FIGURE 2.13 One interpretation of the sequence of events in continent-continent collision. A subduc-
tion zone develops between two plates, each carrying continental material, allowing them to con-
verge and combine, with ophiolite rock remnants of the former ocean bottom caught in a suture
between them. Because lighter, less dense continental rock cannot be subducted, the entire mass
is compressed, metamorphosed and intruded with igneous rocks, and buckled into high moun-
tains (e.g., the Himalayas). The former subduction zone eventually becomes inactive; another can
form somewhere else. (Adapted from various sources.)
The literature abounds with many other minor examples of erosional mountains, in
which a variety of special features are produced by erosional isolation of particular rock
structures. Fairbridge (1968) divided them into (a) structural, tectonic, or construc-
tional forms, and (b) denudational, subsequent, destructional, or sequential mountain