India sets off north
A continent detaches from Madagascar and begins the fastest long journey any plate has made.
- When
- Known to
- ± 3 million years
- Era
- Cretaceous, Mesozoic
India separates from Madagascar around 88 million years ago and starts moving north across the Tethys at rates reaching some twenty centimetres a year, extraordinarily fast for a continent. The isolation makes it an island subcontinent for tens of millions of years, and its passage over the Reunion hotspot produces the Deccan eruptions at the very end of the period. Its eventual collision with Asia raises the Himalaya, but that lies far ahead; for now it is simply in transit.