Context: About 200 million years from now, a new mountain range is expected to emerge in similar fashion, as per research by geologists at the Utrecht University published earlier in 2021.
Background

• Himalayas, the world’s tallest mountains, are a relatively new feature on the timescale of planet Earth. 
• They began forming 50 million years ago when two pieces of the Earth’s crust, called plates, colliding with each other.
• Around 225 million years ago, India was a large island off the coast of Australia and an entire ocean used to lie between it and Asia. But a process called plate tectonics made it a part of Asia and formed the great Himalayas, as land buckled up under colliding forces.

Key Study

• By comparing features commonly found in mountain belts, the scientists formulated what they called the ‘rules of mountain building’. 
• Then by using specialised software they carried out predictions of the mountains that will form in the next 200 million years. 
• The predictions are based on Somalia breaking off from Africa and colliding with India, as is expected based on analysis of plate tectonic data.
• The researchers, led by geologist Dr Douwe van Hinsbergen, call these mountains of the future as the ‘Somalaya’ mountain range.  
• The scientists believe that the mountain range that will form as a result of this collision, the so-called ‘Somalaya’ mountains, will the “Himalayas of their day”. 
• Unfortunately, none of the people currently living will be able to witness and verify this in their lifetime.
• The researchers also found out that northwest India will first get buried around 50 kilometers deep below Somalia during the collision process. 
• But it will re-emerge as Somalia rotates. In geological history, such a process can be seen to have happened in western Norway some 400 million years back.

About Plate Tectonics Theory

• Continents rest on massive slabs of rock called tectonic plates.
• The plates are always moving and interacting in a process called plate tectonics.
• Some of the most dynamic sites of tectonic activity are seafloor spreading zones and giant rift valleys.

In the process of seafloor spreading, molten rock rises from within the Earth and adds new seafloor (oceanic crust) to the edges of the old.

• Seafloor spreading is most dynamic along giant underwater mountain ranges known as mid-ocean ridges.
• As the seafloor grows wider, the continents on opposite sides of the ridge move away from each other.
• The North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, for example, are separated by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
• The two continents are moving away from each other at the rate of about 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) per year.

Rift valleys are sites where a continental landmass is ripping itself apart. Africa, for example, will eventually split along the Great Rift Valley system.

• What is now a single continent will emerge as two—one on the African plate and the other on the smaller Somali plate.
• The new Somali continent will be mostly oceanic, with the Horn of Africa and Madagascar its largest landmasses.
• In plate tectonics, Earth’s outermost layer, or lithosphere—made up of the crust and upper mantle—is broken into large rocky plates.

These plates lie on top of a partially molten layer of rock called the asthenosphere.

• Due to the convection of the asthenosphere and lithosphere, the plates move relative to each other at different rates, from two to 15 centimeters (one to six inches) per year.

This interaction of tectonic plates is responsible for many different geological formations such as the Himalaya mountain range in Asia, the East African Rift, and the San Andreas Fault in California, United States.