Dinosaurs roamed around mountains in Central Asia shaped by a dead ocean

Scientists have found that Central Asia had large mountain ranges during the Cretaceous period, a time when dinosaurs lived. However, defying earlier belief, they now say that climate or movements inside the Earth had nothing to do with it. A long-lost ocean is what shaped this landscape, a team of researchers from Adelaide University suggest in a new study. The Tethys Ocean vanished millions of years ago, with the Mediterranean Sea being only a tiny fragment of this large water body. This occurrence happened long before the Himalayas were formed from tectonic movement. But in the case of the mountains in Central Asia, distant oceanic dynamics led to mountains taking shape. For a long time, scientists thought these ancient mountains were formed by local weather or mantle processes. But geological data gathered over decades shows that the Tethys Ocean churned several kilometres away, and yet managed to give birth to a large mountain range during the time of dinosaurs.

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Dinosaurs lived amidst mountains in Central Asia

According to the study in Communications Earth, the Tethys Ocean slowly vanished during the Meso-Cenozoic era. However, before it disappeared, its movements generated immense tectonic stress, which travelled along ancient geological fault lines—known as suture zones—triggering the creation of mountain ridges thousands of kilometres away from the actual oceanic collision. Stijn Glorie, co-author of the study, said, "The present-day relief of Central Asia was largely built by the India-Eurasia collision and ongoing convergence. However, during the Cretaceous period, dinosaurs would have seen a mountainous landscape as well, similar to the present-day Basin-and-Range Province in the western USA."

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What the study shows about the power of oceans

To understand what would have transpired millions of years ago, the team used thermal history models to track how rocks cooled as they were uplifted and eroded over millions of years. The models were integrated with plate-tectonic reconstructions of the Tethys Ocean, precipitation data, and mantle-convection simulations, which helped them determine how mountains were shaped in Central Asia. The findings revealed a hidden history of the formations in the region and, more importantly, showed that oceans have the power to influence activities thousands of kilometres away and deep inside a continent.