Orogeny millions of years and build mountains from plains or from the seabed. The topographic height of orogenic mountains is related to the principle of isostasy, that is, a balance of the downward gravitational force upon an upthrust mountain range (composed of light, continental crust material) and the buoyant upward forces exerted by the dense underlying mantle. Frequently, rock formations that undergo orogeny are severely deformed and undergo metamorphism. Orogenic processes may push deeply buried rocks to the surface. Sea-bottom and near-shore material may cover some or all of the orogenic area. If the orogeny is due to two continents colliding,
Colorado orogeny Central Plains orogeny. The boundary between the Colorado orogeny and the Wyoming craton is the Cheyenne belt, a 5-km-wide mylonitic shear zone that verges northward. The Cheyenne belt transects and cuts off the south edge of the older Trans-Hudson orogeny. The Paleoproterozoic volcanic and sedimentary rocks that resulted from the Colorado orogeny underwent metamorphism followed by plastic folding under moderate pressure and temperature (PT) conditions (temperature about 500 °C and pressures in excess of 1.2 GPa). The metamorphism was accompanied by intrusion of intermediate calc-alkalic rocks, such as the granodiorites of the Boulder Creek batholith. The accompanying amphibolite facies metamorphism