Why are ocean fossils found at the top of the rocky mountains?

Answer 1

When two continental plates collide, one has to give and the other rises over the first. It there are fossils in this material, it can be pushed to the highest peaks of mountains. Evidence of this is found in the Grand Canyon where fossils of ocean creatures anr found many thousands of feet above sea level.

Answer 2

Mountains are not permanent, the rocks which form mountain belts such as the Himalayas, Alps, Rockies and Andes were once below sea level, hence the fossils.

The movement of tectonic plates in the Earth's crust sometimes causes two continental plates to come together and it is the sedimentary rocks, which were between the plates, which becomes squeezed up to form the mountains.

Answer 3

First you have to understand what mountains are.

Earth's crust is formed of plates of either oceanic or continental crust.

When two continental plates collide, the sediments which formed on the ocean floor between them and some of the oceanic crust are squeezed by the colliding plates into lots of folds. The folds start to erode as they are slowly pushed upwards, but the upward movement is more than the rate of erosion.

These are your mountains, and the fossils found there are in the old oceanic sediments.

Answer 4

Because the rocks in which the fossils are found used to be at the bottom of oceans. Due to the coming together of crustal plates the ocean sediments formally between them were squeezed and some were pushed up to become mountain ranges. In some cases an oceanic plate can be pushed under a nearby continent thereby raising the continent and causing the offshore sediments, with the fossils, to be raised high above it's previous level.

Answer 5

the tectonic plates keep moving all the time. the Himalayas were once not a mountain range but when India crashed with Asia the Himalayan ranges were formed so that can be on reason as to why we find marine fossils on mountain ranges and another reason can be that long long ago a prehistoric tsunami washed up the organism on a piece of land which later became a mountain range

Answer 6

Because sea level was very high up into the mountains... :) :(

Answer 7

The sedimentary rocks in which the fossils are found were formed in an ocean or sea and were pushed up by tectonic forces when continental plates came together.

Answer 8

because the mountains at one point (such as during the ice age) were underwater

Answer 9

Dino's!