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About 250 Ma, during the late Permian era, a new ocean began forming in the southern end of what geologists call the Paleo-Tethys Ocean . A rift formed along the northern continental shelf of Southern Pangea ( Gondwana). Over the next 60 million years, that piece of shelf, known as Cimmeria, traveled north, pushing the floor of the Paleo-Tethys under the eastern end of Northern Pangea ( Laurasia). The Tethys ocean formed between Cimmeria and Gondwana, directly over where the Paleo-Tethys used to be.

During the Jurassic period (150 Ma), Cimmeria finally collided with Laurasia. There it stalled, the ocean floor behind it buckling under, forming the Tethyan Trench. As water levels rose, the western Tethys came to shallowly cover significant portions of Europe. Around the same time, Laurasia and Gondwana began drifting apart, leaving the Atlantic Ocean between them. Between the Jurassic and the CretaceousThe Cretaceous period is one of the major divisions of the geologic timescale, reaching from the end of the Jurassic period (about 135 mya) to the beginning of the Paleocene epoch of the Tertiary period (65 mya). The end of the Cretaceous also defines the (100 Ma), even Gondwana began breaking up, pushing AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest continent in both area and population, after Asia. 30,244,050 km2 (11,677,240 mi2) including the islands, it covers 20. 3% of the total land area on Earth, and with over 800 million human inhabitants it accounts for ar and IndiaThe Republic of India is a large multicultural country in South Asia, with a population of over one billion. The Indian economy is the fourth largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, and is the world's second-fastest growing economy. north, across the Tethys. As these land masses pushed in on it from all sides, up until as recently as the Late MioceneThe Miocene Epoch is a period of time that extends from about 5 million to 24 million years before the present. As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the start and end are well identified, but the exact dates of the start and end (15 Ma), the Tethys ocean contiued to shrink, becoming the Tethys Seaway or Tethys SeaThe Tethys Sea is a shallow inland body of water that existed between Laurasia and Gondwana, the geological ancestor of the modern Mediterranean, Black, Caspian and Aral Seas. Historical theory The theory that the Tethys Sea existed was first proposed in.

Today, India, IndonesiaThe Republic of Indonesia the world's largest archipelago, is located between the Southeast Asian peninsula and Australia, between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Indonesia borders Malaysia on the island of Borneo ( Kalimantan in Bahasa Indonesia), Papua N and the Indian Ocean cover the area once occupied by the Tethys Ocean. Turkey, Iraq, and Tibet sit on the land once known as Cimmeria. Most of the floor of the Tethys Ocean disappeared under Cimmeria and Laurasia. We only know the Tethys existed because geologists like Suess have found fossils of ocean creatures in rocks in the Himalayas. So, we know those rocks were underwater, before the Indian continental shelf began pushing upward as it smashed into Cimmeria. We can see similar geologic evidence in the Europe, where the movement of Africa raised the Alps.