Ural Mountains

The Ural Mountains form a roughly 2,500 kilometer long range running north to south through Russia, from the Arctic Ocean coast to the Ural River and northwestern Kazakhstan near the Caspian Sea, and they conventionally mark the boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia. Their highest point, Mount Narodnaya, reaches 1,894 meters, though the range's average elevation is closer to 1,000 to 1,300 meters. The Urals formed during the Uralian orogeny, when the eastern edge of the ancient supercontinent Laurasia collided with the smaller continent of Kazakhstania over roughly 90 million years, from the late Carboniferous into the early Triassic period. That makes the range, at an estimated 250 to 300 million years old, one of the oldest mountain chains still standing on Earth.