Most tectonic plates only move at a speed of around 1.5 cm/year, but during its collision course with Eurasia India moved at around 15 cm/year! By tectonic standards that is fast.
Why did India move so fast?
In: 968
It’s not entirely clear.
The best theory is that it could move quickly because the Indian plate is only about half as thick as the other plates formed after the breakup of Gondwana.
The plate might have been thinned during the breakup of the supercontinent by a gigantic Mantle plume – a upwelling of extremely hot rock from deep inside the Earth that would have acted like a blowtorch on the underside of the plate. This plume might remain as a series of smaller plumes found in the Indian Ocean at Marion, Kerguelen and Reunion.
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