Geological Secrets Beneath New York City (with music) (duplicated)

New York City looks modern, but beneath it lies one of the strangest geological stories

in America. Manhattan and the Bronx don’t just look different — they’re built on

completely different types of rock. Most of Manhattan sits on Manhattan schist — a dense,

heat-compressed rock formed when ancient continents collided over 450 million years ago.

That incredibly strong schist is the reason Manhattan can support massive skyscrapers packed

so closely together. But just north of Manhattan, the Bronx rests on Bronx gneiss

— an even older rock, dating back nearly one billion years. These rocks formed

on different pieces of Earth’s crust, stitched together long before North America looked anything