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Appalachian Mountains vs. Rocky Mountains

Appalachian Mountains

The Appalachian Mountains, often called the Appalachians, are a system of mountains in eastern North America. The Appalachians first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. They once reached elevations similar to those of the Alps and the Rocky Mountains before experiencing natural erosion.

Location

Geographically Appalachia and the Appalachian Mountains cover states including Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and the Canadian Provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick.

Location

Formation

As mountains rose, erosion began to wear them down. Streams carried rock debris down slope to be deposited in nearby lowlands. NASA image of the Appalachian Valley and Ridge province. These rock layers were folded during the series of continental collisions that formed the Appalachians during the Paleozoic Era.

Rocky Mountains

The Rocky Mountains stretch some 3,000 miles from British Columbia and Alberta in Canada through Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and down to New Mexico in the U.S. The range offers dramatic wilderness, diverse wildlife and alpine lakes. Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park is traversed by numerous hiking trails and the famously scenic Trail Ridge Road, a 48-mile highway that reaches a high point of 12,183ft.

Location

The Rocky Mountains include at least 100 separate ranges, which are generally divided into four broad groupings: the Canadian Rockies and Northern Rockies of Montana and northeastern Idaho; the Middle Rockies of Wyoming, Utah, and southeastern Idaho; the Southern Rockies, mainly in Colorado and New Mexico; and the Colorado Plateau in the Four Corners region of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Formation

In the south, an older mountain range was formed 300 million years ago, then eroded away. The rocks of that older range were reformed into the Rocky Mountains. The Rocky Mountains took shape during an intense period of plate tectonic activity that resulted in much of the rugged landscape of the western North America.

Formation

Appalachian Height

Height

The highest mountain in the Appalachian Mountain range is Mount Mitchell at 6,684 feet above sea level. The Appalachian Mountain range in North America runs from Newfoundland, Canada to Alabama, USA, on the east coast. This range is over 1,500 miles long and 100 to 200 miles wide in some areas.

Rocky Mountains Height

Rocky Height

The Rocky Mountains are notable for containing the highest peaks in central North America. The range's highest peak is Mount Elbert located in Colorado at 4,401 meters (14,440 ft) above sea level. Mount Robson in British Columbia, at 3,954 meters (12,972 ft), is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies.

Appalachian Age

The birth of the Appalachian ranges, some 480 million years ago, marks the first of several mountain building plate collisions that culminated in the construction of the super-continent Pangaea with the Appalachians near the center.

Age

Rocky Mountains Age

Rocky Age

The rocky cores of the mountain ranges are, in most places, formed of pieces of continental crust that are over one billion years old. In the south, an older mountain range was formed 300 million years ago, then eroded away. The rocks of that older range were reformed into the Rocky Mountains.

Appalachian Appearance

Appearance

The Appalachians are old. A look at rocks exposed in today's Appalachian mountains reveals elongate belts of folded and thrust faulted marine sedimentary rocks, volcanic rocks and slivers of ancient ocean floor. Strong evidence that these rocks were deformed during plate collision.

Rocky Mountains Appearance

Rocky Appearance

Interestingly, the Rocky Mountains encompass over 100 separate mountain ranges rather than one range. The Rocky Mountains form the Great Divide; since the peaks reach so high, water runs towards the Pacific Ocean on the western side of the Rockies and towards the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans on the eastern side.

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