Not Quite So High

Mount Everest is known for its abundance of peaks and climbers, but before the days of mountain notoriety, the summit was the seafloor—470 million years ago. The gray limestone on the upper part of Mount Everest was initially part of the continental shelf in Asia during the Paleozoic Era. The rocks from the summit are known as Qomolangma Limestone, and they contain fragments of ancient shells of marine life from the Ordovician Period of the Paleozoic Era.