During the Late Cretaceous and early Cenozoic, the Indian plate drifted northward a vast distance resulting in the closure of the Neo-Tethys Ocean. Approximately 40-50 million years ago remnants of the ocean vanished as India collided with the Eurasian plate. As the continental plates are relatively low density they cannot be subducted. This results in the Eurasian plate being thrusted up leading to the rise of the Tibetan Plateau, bounded to the south by the collisional Himalayan mountain range. The Himalayan foreland basin is adjacent to the Himalayan mountain belt; it laps onto the Indian Craton to the south and is bounded by stacked thrust sheets of the Himalayas to the north. The foreland basin, much like the Himalayan mountain range, spans approximately west to east across Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh. The actively subsiding foreland basin lies beneath the Punjab region of Pakistan and the Gangetic plain of India and southern-most Nepal.