Mountains of the Future: the Somalaya Mountains and the collision of India, Somalia and Madagascar

You could call it experimental plate tectonics: the formation of the Somalaya Mountains. Predicting these Mountains of the Future requires developing ‘rules’ and ‘recipes’ of geological behaviour. Understanding these principles will help us to to understand our geological past. Therefore, geologists at Utrecht University’s Faculty of Geosciences drew up a series of such rules – the first in the world – to describe how mountain ranges will look in the future. Developing these rules allows using paleogeographic reconstruction to predict modern geological phenomena, such as ore deposits. Failure to predict correctly means the reconstructions and/or the rules and recipes contain errors, and drives targeted research and innovation. For more info visit the Faculty of Geosciences website: (English) (Dutch) Produced by: Dan Brinkhuis Motion design: Sander Zwartepoorte Sound design: Sander Houtman Narrated by: Kirsten Lennox