Above and Beyond: Ouachita Mountains

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with the NASA Earth Observatory.

All images, illustrations, and videos courtesy of NASA except:

·       Alfred Wegener photo courtesy of Bildarchiv Foto Marburg

·       Drawings of continental drift by Alfred Wegener from The Movements of the Continents and the Oceans

·       Lystrosaurus illustration courtesy of Nobu Tamura

·       Sea creature illustration copyright The National Library of Israel, Shapell Family Digitization Project _and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Department of Geography – Historic Cities Research Project

·       Photo of Half Dome courtesy of D.L. Peck, U.S. Geological Survey

·       Photo of Kanchenjunga Mountain courtesy of Wikimedia user Anirban c8

·       Mountain formation illustrations by Marc Lussier (STScI)

·       Aerial photo of the Himalayan Mountains courtesy of Wikimedia user Pipimaru

 

Music courtesy of Associated Production Music

Written by Andrea Gianopoulos

Designed by Marc Lussier

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[SLOW MUSIC]

 

(DESCRIPTION)

An aerial shot of a series of mountain ridges and valleys form spirals and ripples.

 

Text, Ouachita Mountains, Oklahoma, U.S.A., The Ouachita Mountains in the southeastern corner of Oklahoma formed more than 300 million years ago.

 

The range's complex pattern of folded contours illustrates its complicated geologic history.

 

The Ouachita Mountains are a highly eroded remnant of a much larger range of folded mountains that may once have stretched from Texas into southeastern Canada.

 

Close-up of rocky ridges and green valleys that alternate one after another.

 

Text, Similarities between rock layers of the Ouachita and the Appalachian Mountains indicate that they were once part of a massive mountain chain formed by the same processes that created the supercontinent Pangaea.

 

An area of several rows of rocky ridges is encircled.