How to explain lack of flatland?
I want to have an Earth like planet, but with most of the continents having very little flatland. Thus continents would be covered mostly by hills and mountains. I want the rest of the planet to be as similar to Earth as possible in size, gravity, ocean coverage, atmosphere, etc.
How do I explain this?
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1 answer
A recent Snowball Earth period might help.
Heavy glaciation can cause enormous changes to the terrain. There are no longer any glaciers where I live, but there once were, during a recent ice age. Their legacy includes
- Glacial erratics - boulders dropped in the middle of nowhere
- Glacial valleys (shaped like the letter "U")
- Moraines and other deposits.
- Drumlins
The formation of glacial valleys in particular can be quite extreme:
Gif courtesy of Wikipedia user Intexpliki under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
You could go with a normal ice age, but you won't see glaciation over all of the planet, just portions extending out from the poles, perhaps into the southern temperate zones. That's why a Snowball Earth scenario is better.
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