Indus-Yarlung Suture Zone

The Indus-Yarlung Suture Zone runs across southern Tibet along the northern margin of the Himalayas, marking the line where the Indian Plate collided with the Eurasian Plate beginning about 52 million years ago; Mount Kailash sits within this zone. As the plates converged, slabs of oceanic crust and upper mantle were thrust onto the Indian Plate and, in places, backthrust north onto the margin of the Eurasian Plate, producing two distinct belts of ophiolite rather than a single continuous zone. The exposed rock includes ophiolite melange derived from the vanished Neotethys ocean, remnants of Mesozoic volcanic island arcs such as basalt, dacite and radiolarian chert, and Eocene continental sediment, and recent research suggests some of these ophiolites may have originated through Early Cretaceous subduction rather than a large ocean basin. The suture marks one of the fundamental boundaries in Himalayan geology, recording the closure of an ancient ocean and the continental collision that built the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. This entity documents the Indus-Yarlung Suture Zone specifically as a geological formation.