Here is what you should know about the Appalachian Mountains. The Appalachian Mountains is an iconic mountain range. The Appalachians reportedly formed around 480 million years. There is a lot to appreciate about them. Here are some things you may not know about these mountains. The Appalachian mountains have an international footprint The Appalachian Mountains are almost 200 miles long. This mountain range span across countries and has a huge footprint. These mountains span across 18 American states and five Canadian provinces. Origin of the southern Appalachian mountains The Southern Appalachian Mountains formed because of two continents that collided almost three hundred million years ago. A supercontinent, called Gondwana, made up of what we know as Africa and South America collided with a landmass that is now part of North America. 100 million years later, the two continents separated again. This formed the southern base of the Appalachians. Parts of the Appalachian mountains are more than 1 billion years old. The Appalachian Mountains are a huge part of the North American landscape. However, researchers have yet to uncover exactly how old they are. This is due to the fact the range of mountains did not form at the same time. Some of them have cropped up many times and then eroded time and time again. However, some claim that parts of it are more than a billion years old. The Appalachian mountains could have contributed to an ice age. High levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused global temperatures to rise. Many volcanic eruptions that caused the formation of the northern Appalachian Mountains almost 460 million years ago did not cause high temperatures to keep rising long-term. This is surprising because these eruptions spewed a lot of CO2. However, 15 million years after the eruptions, the earth went through an ice age. Some researchers speculate that acid rain from the carbon-dense air that hit the Appalachians mountains created limestone, which eroded into the Nevada sea. This may have caused global temperatures to go down over time. The Appalachian mountains could have been as tall as the Himalayas Some scientists believe the Appalachian Mountains were once much taller than they are now. They could have been as tall as the Himalayas, which is home to the tallest mountain in the world - Mount Everest. Currently, the Appalachians are at their highest in North Carolina, United States.
