Ouachita orogeny Ouachita orogeny The Ouachita orogeny was a mountain building event that resulted in the folding and faulting of strata currently exposed in the Ouachita Mountains. The more extensive Ouachita system extends from the current range in Arkansas and Oklahoma southeast to the Black Warrior Basin in Alabama and to the southwest through the Llano, Marathon, and Solitario uplifts in Texas on into Coahuila and Chihuahua in Mexico. The region during the early Paleozoic lay off the coast of the southern portion of Laurentia, in what is now the southern United States. Laurentia straddled the equator at the time and the
Trans-Hudson orogeny valley that continued to spread until it resulted in a passive margin in which there was no tectonic activity. Shallow marine deposits formed on the continental shelves, and oceanic crust formed on the margins of the continental cratons as the divergence continued. Eventually the divergence stopped, then reversed direction, and collision occurred between continental land masses. During the Wopmay orogeny, subduction occurred as oceanic crust of the Slave Craton was subducted beneath an eastward moving continental plate. Likewise, during the Trans-Hudson orogeny, rifting at first separated the Superior craton from the rest of the continent. Then the Superior Craton reversed