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The jagged peaks of the Himalayas are the highest in the world, with Mount Everest reaching 29,029 feet and more than 35 other mountains exceeding 25,000 feet. The Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, the result of 50 million years of collision between the Indian and Eurasian plates, are the most spectacular manifestation of this type of boundary. Highly metamorphosed rock, like gneiss, is also common. Magma cannot penetrate this thick crust instead, it cools intrusively and forms granite. Instead, the continental crust at these convergent boundaries gets folded, faulted, and thickened, forming great mountain chains of uplifted rock. This results in very little subduction, as most of the rock is too light to be carried very far down into the dense mantle. When plates converge, they do so in one of three settings: oceanic plates collide with each other (forming oceanic-oceanic boundaries), oceanic plates collide with continental plates (forming oceanic-continental boundaries), or continental plates collide with each other (forming continental-continental boundaries).Įarthquakes are common any time large slabs of Earth come into contact with each other, and convergent boundaries are no exception. In fact, most of the Earth's most powerful quakes have occurred at or near these boundaries.ĭomdomegg / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0 ( Text labels added by Brooks Mitchell)Ĭontinental-continental convergent boundaries pit large slabs of crust against each other. Oceanic plates are made up of heavier basalt, the result of magma flows from mid-ocean ridges. Unlike divergent (constructive) and convergent (destructive) plate boundaries, lithosphere at transform boundaries is neither created nor destroyed deeming them conservative. The crust that makes up continental plates is thicker yet less dense than oceanic crust because of the lighter rocks and minerals that compose it. What Is Transform Boundary Transform boundaries occur where the Earth’s tectonic plates slide past each other horizontally along transform or strike-slip faults.
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Convergent plate boundaries are often the sites of earthquakes, volcanoes, and other significant geological activity.Įarth's surface is made up of two types of lithospheric plates: continental and oceanic.109K views Convergent Boundary Facts When two tectonic plates move towards each other the boundary is called. Each one is unique because of the density of the plates involved. A convergent boundary is a location where two tectonic plates move towards each other. , which squeezes or pushes the two tectonic plates together. When the oceanic plate is pushed under, it melts and turns into hot magma which burns its way. are places where two or more tectonic plates move toward each other. This type of convergent boundary happens where an oceanic plate and a continental plate push together causing the oceanic plate to be forced under the continental plate into the mantle because the oceanic plate is thinner. There are three types of convergent plate boundaries: oceanic-oceanic boundaries, oceanic-continental boundaries, and continental-continental boundaries. Cross-section of the lithosphere and asthenosphere showing Transform, divergent, and convergent plate boundaries on Earth.When two tectonic plates move toward each other and collide, they form a convergent plate boundary.