Exam 13: Mountain Building and Continental Frameworks

Give an example of an intracratonic basin.

Crustal collapse produces ________ valleys.

What supercontinent drifted apart in the Proterozoic to form the first extensional phase of the Appalachian orogen?

An old, eroded Aleutian-type margin would be far more likely to contain significant thicknesses of continental sediments than an active Andean margin.

What unique geologic event happened to the Canadian and American prairies during the Cretaceous?

An ________ is a thick accumulation of sediments and small, tectonic blocks composed of material scraped off a descending, lithospheric plate.

Examine the words and/or phrases for each question below and determine the relationship among the majority of words/phrases. -Choose the option that does not fit the pattern.

What are two broad ideas on the pace of evolution of continents?

Mountain belts are generally narrower than mountain ranges.

As an inactive mountain belt ages, what happens to the adjacent crustal areas?

The ________ continental mountain belts will have the thickest or lightest underlying crustal rocks.

The ________ mountains in North America were formed by a continent-continent collision in the Paleozoic.

India was rifted from Antarctica about 130 million years ago, drifted northwards throughout the Cretaceous and Early Cenozoic, to finally crash into Asia 10 million years ago.

The two most likely locations for sediments to accumulate on an Aleutian margin are in the trench and on the edges of the arc.

Deep in the interior of a continental shield, an eroded belt of deformed, Precambrian, high pressure, plutonic and metamorphic rocks would most correctly be called an orogen.

Explain the process of accretionary wedge development.

Mountains and mountain building processes have little direct influence upon regional climate.

Thick, gradual accumulations of shallow water, Jurassic and younger limestones, sandstones and shales characterize the passive continental margins along the Atlantic.

On an ideal Andean convergence zone, what three things happen specifically to the continental margin?

The placement of hotter than average mantle weakens the mantle's ability to support the continental crust and the crust founders and sags down, reducing its regional elevation.