Sevier orogeny east. In contrast, the Laramide orogeny produced “basement-cored” uplifts that often took advantage of pre-existing faults that formed during rifting in the Late Precambrian during the breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia or during the Ancestral Rocky Mountains orogeny. The Sevier orogenic belt consisted of a series of thin plates along gently dipping west thrust sheets and moving from west to east. These thin skinned thrusts moved late Precambrian to Mesozoic age rock of the Cordilleran passive margin east. The Sevier meets the Laramide orogenic belt on its eastern side. The Sevier and Laramide combination is similar to the modern day
Sonoma orogeny arcs, composed of volcanic and volcaniclastic strata and paired geotectonically with Sonoma accretionary prisms to the east, are present in the Klamath-Sierran region of the Cordilleran orogen to the south of volcanic cover in the Pacific Northwest. Burchfiel and Davis presented a detailed model relating the Sonoma orogeny to convergent plate tectonic processes. They postulated an east-dipping subduction zone beneath a magmatic arc to the west of the continent. In this scheme, a back-arc basin floored by oceanic crust lay between the arc and the continent. The Sonoma orogeny involved closure of this basin and a process by which the