An Ocean on Top of the Mountains

Hi.  I've just been looking for fossils.  There are lots of fossils of spiral creatures called ammonites in the rocks in Dolpo.  Here's an ammonite that I found when I was on my trek.  (Do you see it?  It's next to my left hand.)

The funny thing is that ammonites are sea creatures.  So what are they doing on top of the mountains?Uncle Guy explained it to me and I'm going to try and explain it to Grace, Robin and Adam.  Here we go ...

Adam, Grace and Robin are very clever so they know where lots of places are, like France and Germany and Canada.  But I wonder if they know that countries move?!  This takes millions of years so Adam, Robin and Grace won't be able to see France or Germany or Canada moving around, but if they came back to earth in millions of years then all of the countries would be in different places!

Once upon a time, India was an island.  There was an ocean between India and the rest of Asia, called the Tethys Sea.  Then India moved north and crashed with Asia.  It was such a gigantic crash that the earth in between India and Asia got squashed and crumpled.  Have you ever seen a crumpled car bumper after a small crash?  Well it was a bit like that except millions of times bigger.  The squashed earth turned into the Himalayas, which are now the biggest mountains in the world.

Some parts of the Tethys Sea got pushed up onto the top of the mountains when India and Asia crashed.  This is why there are sea creatures like ammonites in the mountains.  

Here are some more fossils from the Tethys Sea.  Can you spot them?

Here are the mountains where I found the fossils.  I took this picture when I was over 4,000m above the sea, but the fossils were once on the sea floor.  Isn't that amazing?

Here's one last fossil picture.  Grace, Robin and Adam should be expert fossil spotters by now so they will probably spot the ammonites straight away.