Orogeny in 1890 to describe the process of mountain building as distinguished from epeirogeny. The formation of an orogen can be accomplished by the tectonic processes such as oceanic subduction (where a continent rides forcefully over an oceanic plate for accretionary orogeny) or continental subduction convergence of two or more continents for collisional orogeny). Orogeny usually produces long arcuate (from the Latin "", "to bend like a bow") structures, known as "orogenic belts". Generally, orogenic belts consist of long parallel strips of rock exhibiting similar characteristics along the length of the belt. Although orogenic belts are associated with subduction zones, subduction
Nevadan orogeny deformation from the Nevadan Orogeny in the Eastern Belt is somewhat limited. It was determined that the deformation was minimal in the Eastern Belt by looking at dikes that had intruded the rocks which appeared to be mostly undeformed. These mostly undeformed dikes were dated using the K-Ar method and were determined to be between 169 and 209 Ma in age, which implies they were placed well before any deformation related to the Nevadan Orogeny would have occurred. As the age of these dikes are older than the deformation of the Nevadan Orogeny, it is evident that most of the