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Craton
the stable interior part of a continent thick crust and deep lithospheric roots - composed of Pre-Cambrian rocks, shield + platform
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Shield
core crystalline material, nucleus of a continent
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Platform
flat lying sediment carapace around the shield
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Wilson cycle
the break up and subsequent accretion to again form a supercontinent - cycle takes 300 to 500 mil. years
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Rodinia
Neoprotezoic supercontinent (Late Pre-Cambrian, earlier than Pangaea)- breaks apart 750 mil years ago
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Laurentia
North American craton - surrounded by passive margins- no plate boundaries, no trench and subduction zone
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Taconic
Mountain building period that created the Appalachian Belt - Ordovician 480 yo. collision of an island arc with the margin of Laurentia
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Evidence for mountain building
- Stratigraphic - unconformity
- Structural - faulting and folding
- Volcanic/radiometric - can be dated
- Sedimentary - weight of thick crust pushes the lithosphere down, creates basins on each side of the mountain, sed. erodes and collects in basins
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Flysch
marine deposits that first fill into foreland basin (clastics+volcanic ash)
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Molasse
Continental deposits (delatic and fluvial - siltstones and conglomerates) that fill in on top of flysch
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