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 |  | The Continental Shuffle Over two hundred fifty million years ago, India, Africa, Australia, and South America were all one continent called Pangea. Over the next several million years, this giant southern continent proceeded to break up, forming the continents we know today. Pangea essentially turned inside out, the edges of the old continent becoming the collision zones of new continents. Africa, South America, and Antarctica began to fragment. What ultimately formed Mt. Everest, about 60 million years ago, was the rapid movement of India northward toward the continent of EuroAsia;Click here for a present-day map of the Indian subcontinent. India charged across the equator at rates of up to 15 cm/year, in the process closing an ocean named Tethys that had separated fragments of Pangea. This ocean is entirely gone today, although the sedimentary rocks that settled on its ocean floor and the volcanoes that fringed its edges remain to tell the tale of its existence. Click here to see a Shockwave animation sequence on the formation of the Himalaya Editor's Picks |Previous Sites |Join Us/E-mail |TV/Web Schedule About NOVA |Teachers |Site Map |Shop |Jobs |Search |To print PBS Online |NOVA Online |WGBH © | Updated November 2000 |