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The Scottish Highlands, the Appalachians, Atlas are the same mountain range

148 points by lifeisstillgood

by shagie

1 subcomments

And if you want to hike it, you've got the International Appalachian Trail... https://iat-sia.org/the-trail/

by biomcgary

4 subcomments

This explains the Scotch-Irish settling in Appalachia. It felt like home, but without the overbearing Brits nearby.

by fsckboy

2 subcomments

glancing at that map, an interesting (to an American mostly just cuz we think we know our own geography) trivia factoid came to mind:
Q: Where in the US are you closest to Africa?
I'll explain the answer key at the bottom so you don't see them sooo readily if you want to think about it... but whatevs
an entirely different interesting factoid, the Catskill Mountains in NY State, which seem to be part of the Appalachian Range, are in fact not mountains at all. What appear to be mountains is actually erosion of a high plateau, leaving mountainous appearing hills https://static1.thetravelimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/upl... (they are however connected to the Appalachians, they just aren't mountains)
.
Wrong Answer: adirolf
A: eniam
I wrote the words backward

by aklemm

0 subcomment

When I learned this, I also learned that in the Appalachian Mountains, the valleys were the peaks originally and the peaks are what were the valleys. This has to do with the type of rock and the erosion that has happened; the original peaks were a softer rock. That mountain range was extremely tall at one point.

by sakopov

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According to this study from 2005 [1] the Appalachians are eroding 6 meters per 1 million years while the rivers are incising 30-100 meters per same time period. So they're technically still becoming more rugged.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250326213947/https://www.geoti...

by jjulius

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If ya think that's neat, go check out the idea behind Baja BC - that huge chunks of British Columbia and Alaska, as well as portions of Washington, were once down by Baja Mexico.
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015AGUFM.T13A2979G/abstra...

by al_borland

1 subcomments

I visited Scotland last year. They bring this up a lot on tours. Some of the distilleries also bought land in the Appalachian region to grow trees to make future whiskey casks.

by nephihaha

2 subcomments

Didn't know about the Atlas, but I knew northern Scotland and Nova Scotia shared a lot of geology.

by Ericson2314

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I'm a little suspicious that they drew the Atlas mountains in the wrong spot.

by trgn

1 subcomments

atlas remain very high though. so what's different there that they're not eroded?

by tengwar2

2 subcomments

I'm finding it difficult to believe that map relates to the title. It's not showing just the Scottish Highlands (roughly speaking the north-west half of Scotland), but the whole of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, plus about half of England, including the famously flat Lincolnshire fens.

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by prennert

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I would file this under blogspam, given the length of the article, the atrocious oversimplifying, highly compressed map and the number of ads.
If you are interested in the geology of Scotland, there are excellent books available, including "Land of Mountain and Flood: The Geology and Landforms of Scotland". I am sure good books about the Appalachians and the Atlas are available, too.

by adolph

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The Scottish Highlands are also significant to contemporary understanding of geology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton%27s_Unconformity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfdwRRpiYGQ&t=68s

by brcmthrowaway

5 subcomments

Where do the himalayas fit in all this?

by cranberryturkey

1 subcomments

check out local hiking trails on ParkLookup