'Lost world' of mountains hidden under our feet

[UM-Bot]

Vast mountains that could be taller than Mt Everest are thought to exist hundreds of miles beneath the ground.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/325620/lost-world-of-mountains-hidden-under-our-feet

[Nnicolette]

That is pretty cool I'll bet they can find some pretty nice resources and historically significant and educational material this way as well.

[Doug1029]

If memory serves:  there have been as many as 17 mountain ranges where the Laurentian Shield is now.

The Front Range is the third range of mountains to stand on that site.

The Wind River Range in Wyoming was once buried under outwash from nearby mountains.

And we have another one buried under sedimentary rocks in southern Oklahoma.  About that one:  there's a long-abandoned river delta buried there, too.  The old stream channels contain oil.  One little oil company figured out that if they drilled in the stream channels, they got the oil and if they drilled between them, they got dry holes.  So they leased the land above the stream channels.  Chesapeake saw they were getting oil and noted that they had overlooked leases on a lot of land in the area.  So Chesapeake bought up leases and started drilling a long list of dry holes.  Spent tens of millions figuring out what happened.

Doug

[Seti42]

This makes me wonder if there are archaeological remnants/relics hiding down there forever lost to our abilities to study them...

[DirtyDocMartens]

The article has a link to another one about the deepest hole in the world, which is interesting and more accessible to a humble layman like me.

Edited February 18, 2019 by DirtyDocMartens
Typo

[Ogbin]

On 2/15/2019 at 10:45 AM, Seti42 said:

This makes me wonder if there are archaeological remnants/relics hiding down there forever lost to our abilities to study them...

 Could Jules Verne had been on to something? 

[Tatetopa]

On 2/15/2019 at 7:45 AM, Doug1o29 said:

And we have another one buried under sedimentary rocks in southern Oklahoma.  About that one:  there's a long-abandoned river delta buried there, too.  The old stream channels contain oil.  One little oil company figured out that if they drilled in the stream channels, they got the oil and if they drilled between them, they got dry holes.  So they leased the land above the stream channels.  Chesapeake saw they were getting oil and noted that they had overlooked leases on a lot of land in the area.  So Chesapeake bought up leases and started drilling a long list of dry holes.  Spent tens of millions figuring out what happened.

Doug

My dad was doing that as a geologist for a small company in Texas before he died in 1994.  Ancient rivers  become submerged under a more recent sea.  He was looking at meanders and sandbars.  Non-porous rock under the river bed covered by a sand and gravel bar, later capped by limestone on the sea bottom makes a nice little pocket to trap oil.  They are relatively small reservoirs, so a lot of big companies weren't interested.  He found 5 or 6.