Explore the billion-year saga of the Blue Ridge Mountains, from their violent formation to the sculpted landscapes seen today.
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A Billion Years Beneath Your Feet
This series, Ancient Peaks and Deep Time, explores the geological forces that built Shenandoah National Park over more than a billion years of Earth's history.
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Ancient Collisions That Built Shenandoah
The granite at Old Rag Mountain is over a billion years old, forged during a colossal event geologists call the Grenville Orogeny.
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Ancient Lava Flows Cap Shenandoah's Peaks
About 570 million years ago, this entire region was splitting apart as an ancient supercontinent began to rift.
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When an Ancient Ocean Covered Shenandoah
About 500 million years ago, a vast ocean called Iapetus stretched across what is now the eastern United States, submerging the land that would eventually become…
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Himalayan Giants of Ancient Eastern America
Three hundred and fifty million years ago, the mountains surrounding you stood as tall as the Himalayas do today — peaks possibly reaching twenty-five thousand feet or…
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5
Water and Time Carved These Mountains
The Appalachians once stood as tall as the Alps, but three hundred million years of rain, ice, and flowing water have worn them down to the rounded ridges you see today.
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