Did You Know Kentucky Was Once Connected to Scotland and Other Parts of Europe by Ancient Mountains?

What Do Kentucky's Appalachian Mountains and the Scottish Highlands Have in Common?

Y'all. I fell down a rabbit hole this morning. I was a little bummed I didn't get asked to go to the Windy Hollow Biscuit House listener appreciation lunch today. I wanted to load up on biscutis and gravy carbs and instead had to eat the sweet potato, chickpea, and quinoa hash that I brought today. While sulking, I devoured my actually very delicious and healthy hash, while scrolling Facebook a little bit. It was then that I found a video that made me stop and say, "What the, what??"

I've lived in or next to Kentucky my entire life and had no idea our friends in Scotland have something very much in common with us... our Appalachian Mountains.

So, I'll go ahead and be completely honest with you. I don't have a degree in geology and aside from helping my kid with her 4th-grade geology unit science homework, I don't research or pretend to understand much about plate tectonics and the movement of the Earth's crust. So I'm going to give you the very surface gist of what I found out. If you want to know more, I'll give you the resources to do your own deep dive.

Kentucky and Scotland Were Once Part of the Same Ancient Mountain System

Here's the video I saw.

Now, I don't just go off of whatever I see on Facebook. That would be dumb, right? And I needed a real source. Here's what I found from the National Park Service.

The Appalachians are part of a larger zone of continental collision that includes the Marathon and Ouachita mountains in the southern United States, the Atlas Mountains in Africa, and the Caledonide Mountains in Greenland, the British Isles, and Scandinavia. The modern Atlantic Ocean opened about 200 million years ago as Europe, Africa and South America separated from North America. Fragments of the ancient collision zone were left on different continents, including the Appalachians in North America and the Caledonides in Europe.

I picture a giant jigsaw puzzle in my mind that got smashed apart by tectonic plates.

What Happened to the Mountains?

About 500 million years ago, the ancient Iapetus Ocean began closing as tectonic plates moved toward each other. Over millions of years, continents and pieces of continental crust collided, causing the Earth's crust to compress, crumple, and rise, creating enormous mountain ranges.

The Geological Society of London specifically says the collision produced mountain ranges extending from Scandinavia through Britain and into North America.

Then Pangaea formed as the continents continued to collide. The Appalachian Mountains and the Caledonide mountains of Scotland and other parts of the British Isles were part of this much larger ancient mountain-building system.

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Then Pangaea Broke Apart

Eventually, Pangaea broke apart. The Atlantic Ocean opened, and the land masses moved farther apart. What had once been part of the same enormous mountain system was now separated by an ocean.

That's why the Appalachian Mountains and the Scottish Highlands can have such a surprising geological connection even though they're thousands of miles apart today.

Geologists refer to this ancient mountain-building history as part of the Caledonian-Appalachian mountain system, with the Scottish Highlands, parts of Ireland and Scandinavia, and the Appalachian Mountains all preserving pieces of that ancient history.

So, there you have it. Kentucky and Scotland have a connection that goes back hundreds of millions of years. This video from PBS/KET explains it a lot better than I could.

And all I wanted to do this morning was eat a biscuit. I mean, I went ahead and went and ate my biscuits and gravy, but I had a good story to tell about why we should start wearing kilts and play the bagpipes.

Source: geolsoc.org

Source: pbs.org

Source: usgs.gov