Ancient Landscapes of Western North America

Download or read book Ancient Landscapes of Western North America written by Ronald C. Blakey and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Allow yourself to be taken back into deep geologic time when strange creatures roamed the Earth and Western North America looked completely unlike the modern landscape. Volcanic islands stretched from Mexico to Alaska, most of the Pacific Rim didn’t exist yet, at least not as widespread dry land; terranes drifted from across the Pacific to dock on Western Americas’ shores creating mountains and more volcanic activity. Landscapes were transposed north or south by thousands of kilometers along huge fault systems. Follow these events through paleogeographic maps that look like satellite views of ancient Earth. Accompanying text takes the reader into the science behind these maps and the geologic history that they portray. The maps and text unfold the complex geologic history of the region as never seen before.