What is Orogeny?
Orogeny (“mountain creating” in Greek) is a mountain-building event caused by extreme volcanism (as in the Deccan Traps) or movement of the tectonic plates, large slabs of rock that make up the Earth’s crust. The plates float on top of a plastic, superheated mantle, made of partially melted rock. As the material in the mantle circulates, the tectonic plates slowly move around on top, creating different continental arrangements over tens or hundreds of millions of years. At first, the entire Earth was molten, with a fairly uniform height, until large segments and eventually the entire planet cooled down and became solid, fragmenting into several distinct plates. Over three billion years ago, the first known orogeny events began, due to both volcanism and plate movement. The oceans already existed by this time, and may have formed only 100 million years after the formation of the Earth itself. As of 2008, there is some confusion among geologists as to which continent was the first. Some
