How Earth Was Made New York City: Summary
New York is constructed on a bedrock that comprises of very distorted metamorphic rock known as Manhattan Schist. The rock is believed to be four hundred and fifty million years old and was produced under enormous pressure. By observing the earth formation, it is evident that in the last 450 million years ago, NYC was located in a region where a collision of continental plates had occurred. Therefore, New York was trapped in Pangaea, the epicentre of the recently made supercontinent. The collision caused a push up of the continental plates towards the land that was situated between the two plates. Mountains were therefore forced to move upwards leading to the formation of Tectonic Mountain Range. The New York bedrock was formed after the collision of Africa and North America, which was at zero degrees at the equator. Tall buildings can only be constructed where the bedrock is near the surface hence acting as a control for construction. All this happened during the Taconian Orogeny.
New York is a place of earth-shaping events as the bedrock that supports those buildings tells a billion years’ history. Schist is the backbone of the island beginning from Hudson Bridge on the north to the southern end in Battery. At Washington Square, Schist dips several feet below the ground making a steady beginning at Chambers Street. The downtown and midtown are as a result of dips and rises because elevated buildings had to be constructed on solid bedrock and not the valleys since they were full of glacial tills. Beneath the Harlem river is beds of metamorphosed limestone known as Inwood marble. The Fordham Gneiss breaks out to the surface in the Bronx to form Grand Concourse ridges and Riverdale. The strata are interfolded with each telling a different geological story from where the geological map of New York is reconstructed.
Works Cited
Teachers Pay Teachers. 2020. History Channel’s How The Earth Was Made: New York Video Questions. [online] Available at: <https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/History-Channels-How-the-Earth-Was-Made-New-York-Video-Questions-4025166> [Accessed 15 May 2020].