Prelims ask
Narodnaya. Russia and Kazakhstan. Odd one out beside Alps, Caucasus and Andes.
Europe · Old fold
Urals
- Countries
- North to south through Russia; the southern end reaches Kazakhstan.
- Length
- About 2,500 km. Exam-safe figure.
- Orientation
- North–south.
- Mountain type
- Old fold
- Plates
- Paleozoic collision of Baltica with the Kazakh and Siberian blocks. Now deep inside Eurasia, not on a living plate edge.
- Highest peak
- Mount Narodnaya, 1,895 m.
- Rivers that rise here
- The Ural river rises in the southern Urals and ends in the Caspian (inland). Pechora drains west-north; Ob tributaries drain the east. The Kama carries western water toward the Volga.
- Climate and rain shadow
- Too low to be a strong climatic wall. The Europe–Asia line here is a convention, not a weather barrier of Himalayan rank.
Mains use
Shows that a continental outline can be an old suture, not a modern destructive margin.