Continental Movements Uplift Ophiolites (IMAGE)

University of California - Berkeley

Continental Movements Uplift Ophiolites

Caption

Plate tectonics shifted the continents around over the past 500 million years, inevitably causing collisions. When collisions with volcanic island arcs occurred in the tropics (green band), they exposed rocks called ophiolites (orange), which sucked up carbon from the atmosphere and led to ice formation (blue) and global cooling.

Credit

Nicholas Swanson-Hysell, UC Berkeley

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