Aravalli Range
The Aravalli Range, an eroded stub of ancient mountains, is the oldest range of fold mountains in India. The natural history of the Aravalli Range dates back to times when the Indian Plate was separated from the Eurasian Plate by an ocean. The Proterozoic Aravalli-Delhi orogenic belt in northwest India is similar to the younger Himalayan-type orogenic belts of the Mesozoic-Cenozoic era (of the Phanerozoic) in terms of component parts and appears to have passed through a near-orderly Wilson supercontinental cycle of events. The range rose in a Precambrian event called the Aravalli-Delhi Orogen. The Aravalli Range is a northeast–southwest trending orogenic belt that is located in the northwestern part of Indian Peninsula. It is part of the Indian Shield that was formed from a series of cratonic collisions. In ancient times, Aravalli were extremely high but since have worn down almost completely by millions of years of weathering, whereas the Himalayas being young fold mountains are still continuously rising. Aravalli, being the old fold mountains, have stopped growing higher due to the cessation of upward thrust caused by the stopping of movement of the tectonic plates in the Earth's crust below them. The Aravalli Range joins two of the ancient earth's crust segments that make up the greater Indian craton, the Aravalli Craton which is the Marwar segment of earth's crust to the northwest of the Aravalli Range, and the Bundelkand Craton segment of earth's crust to the southeast of the Aravalli Range. Cratons, generally found in the interiors of tectonic plates, are old and stable parts of the continental lithosphere that has remained relatively undeformed during the cycles of merging and rifting of continents.