Australia's Ancient Himalayan Size Mountain Range

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#geology #australia #mountains
Uncover the extraordinary geological story of the Petermann Ranges, a long-eroded but once-mighty mountain range hidden in the heart of Australia’s Red Centre. This video offers an immersive, scientifically grounded journey into the rise and fall of a mountain belt that once soared to Himalayan heights more than half a billion years ago. Built during the Petermann Orogeny around 550 million years ago, this east–west trending mountain system was the product of enormous tectonic forces acting deep within the Australian continent. Through this detailed exploration, we reveal how distant plate collisions during the assembly of the supercontinent Gondwana transmitted compressive stress into central Australia, causing the ancient Musgrave Province to buckle, break, and rise skyward along massive thrust faults like the Woodroffe Thrust.

This video is not just about rocks—it’s about reconstructing a vanished world. Using clear explanations and engaging visual storytelling, we demonstrate how the Petermann Ranges formed through intraplate compression, crustal shortening, and nappe formation. Massive slabs of Earth’s crust were pushed tens of kilometers over one another, thrusting deep crustal rocks to the surface and creating a mountain range that rivalled the height of today’s Alps and Himalayas. You’ll learn about the major geological structures that shaped this terrain, from low-angle faults to regional-scale nappes, and how these features expose some of the oldest and most metamorphosed rocks in Australia. This video also dives into how scientists determine the height of vanished mountains, through a combination of vertical uplift measurements, pressure-temperature data from metamorphic minerals, and the volume of eroded sediments found in adjacent basins.

The Petermann Ranges were not only born in violence, but destroyed by it. As the video reveals, these mountains were subjected to intense erosion almost as soon as they rose. With no plants to stabilize the landscape during the Ediacaran and Cambrian periods, the bare granite peaks were relentlessly pounded by wind, rain, and gravity. Huge alluvial fans formed around their base, and over millions of years, the debris from their destruction accumulated into thick wedges of sediment that now form the bedrock of much of central Australia. These very sediments—conglomerates and arkosic sandstones—would eventually lithify to become iconic features such as Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjuta (the Olgas). We show how the coarse grains and preserved sedimentary structures in these landforms serve as geological time capsules, preserving the story of the range’s rapid erosion and redeposition.


Studies Used To Construct This Video:
The architecture, kinematics, and lithospheric processes of a compressional intraplate orogen occurring under Gondwana assembly: The Petermann orogeny, central Australia:


Regional high-pressure metamorphism during intracratonicdeformation: the Petermann Orogeny, central Australia:


Duration of high-pressure metamorphism and cooling during the intraplate Petermann Orogeny:


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00:00-01:00 - Introduction
01:01-04:41 - The Birth of The Petermann Mountain Range
04:42-05:48 - How Do We Know How Tall The Range Was?
05:49-07:52 - How The Petermann Ranges Reshaped The Entire Region
07:53-10:51 - Erosion Begins To Destroy The Mountains
10:52-12:50 - How The Petermann Ranges Created Uluru & Kata Tjuta
12:51-13:29 - Another Mountain Building Episode Occurs
13:30-14:03 - What Was Left of The Petermann Ranges After Erosion?
14:04-16:41 - The Petermann Ranges Today
16:42-22:07 - The Mineral Riches Formed By Mountain Building Processes
22:08-23:41 - Conclusion & Patreon / Youtube Member Thank You!