I was on a hike and read a plaque that said this area used to be completely covered by water. My question is, where did all that water go? Just absorbed into the ground? Evaporated?
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Picture a tub full of water with paper plates floating on top.
The plates are floating but also really crowded together. Basically the water in the tub has plates covering it edge to edge.
The water isn’t stagnant. It moves a little, which causes some of the plates drift away from each other, or overlap, or brush past each other.
When the plates overlap, one is pushed up while one is pushed down. This can cause mountains to form from what was a flat or underwater area previously. If the plates move away from each other, a gap is formed that can be filled with water.
In this example the water is like the earth’s molten core (liquid rock) on which the tectonic plates that make up the continents are floating. They move around and as they do they either get pushed up, pushed down, pushed away, or slid past. Because it’s solid rock floating on top of liquid rock these changes take a long time, but eventually create drastic changes on the surface. Tectonic plate movement is how both mountains and oceans are formed.
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