Earth's highest coastal mountain on the move

Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - 06:42 in Earth & Climate

The rocks of Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta - the highest coastal mountain on Earth - tell a fascinating tale: The mountain collides and then separates from former super-continents. Volcanoes are born and die. The mountain travels from Peru to northern Colombia and finally rotates in a clockwise direction to open up an entirely new geological basin. Smithsonian scientists were part of a four-year project to study Santa Marta's geological evolution. Their findings are published in the October 2010 special issue of the Journal of South American Earth Sciences...

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