General Information

Everest, Mount (Tibetan, Chomo Lungma, “goddess-mother”; Nepali, Sagarmatha, “forehead in the sky”), mountain peak, south central Asia, in the Himalaya range, on the frontier of Nepal and Tibet. Mount Everest is the highest peak in the world. The summit was previously believed to be 8,848 m (29,028 ft) above sea level, according to a 1954 Indian government survey. In November 1999, using the latest global positioning system satellite equipment, the mountain's elevation was revised to 8,850 m (29,035 ft). Mount Everest, like the rest of Himalaya, rose from the floor of the ancient Tethys Sea. The range was created when the Eurasian continental plate collided with the Indian subcontinental plate about 30 to 50 million years ago (see Plate Tectonics). Eventually the marine limestone was forced upwards to become the characteristic yellow band on the top of Mount Everest. Beneath the shallow marine rock lies the highly metamorphosed black gneiss of the Precambrian era, a remnant of the original continental plates that collided and forced up Himalaya.