Qomolangma Yellow Band marble

Rock from the highest place on Earth

This marble was originally a limestone formed in a shallow part of the Tethys Ocean and still shows primary sedimentary structure of alternating beds of limestone and shale-rich material inherited from its Ordovician past. Today, however, it is found in the summit area of Qomolangma, uplifted to 8500 m above sea level.

The consequence of such enormous mountain building forces is a prograde regional metamorphism during which the mineralogy of the rocks changed due to increasing temperature and pressure conditions. Thus the Ordovician limestones were metamorphosed to a green-coloured epidote-diopside marble, a rock exhibiting low-grade greenschist metamorphism.