SWISS SCIENTIFIC TEAM

THE NATURE OF FOLDING IN SEDIMENTS OF THE ALPS

SIMULATION GUIDE

Your team’s leader is Dr. Schist, University of Geneva.

You have been mapping an area in the Alps.  These mountains are made of sedimentary rocks.

You have recorded where different rock types occur and have determined that the mountains are intensely folded.  A cross section, showing your ideas about the structure, is shown below.

From your results, you can conclude that huge forces pressed these sediments together into folds.  Could these mountains be wrinkles in the Earth's surface?  Or were they formed when two continents collided?

Earth (read the section headed “folding”)

Mountain (Read the paragraph headed “fold mountains”)

Earth (read the paragraph headed “folds”)

Folded Mountains