Taconic orogeny Taconic orogeny The Taconic orogeny was a mountain building period that ended 440 million years ago and affected most of modern-day New England. A great mountain chain formed from eastern Canada down through what is now the Piedmont of the East coast of the United States. As the mountain chain eroded in the Silurian and Devonian periods, sediments from the mountain chain spread throughout the present-day Appalachians and midcontinental North America. Beginning in Cambrian time, about 550 million years ago, the Iapetus Ocean began to close. The weight of accumulating sediments, in addition to compressional forces in the crust, forced
Colorado orogeny Colorado orogeny The Colorado orogeny, or Colorado orogen, was an orogeny in Colorado and surrounding areas which was a part of the development of the ancestral Rockies. The Colorado orogeny, formerly called the Colorado province, is a >500-km-wide belt of oceanic arc rock (1.78–1.65 Ga) that extends southward into New Mexico and composes a major part of the Proterozoic provinces of southwestern United States. This transcontinental collisional event occurred during the Paleoproterozoic (Statherian Period). The Wyoming sector of the Colorado orogeny was formerly called the Medicine Bow orogeny. The eastern sector extends into the High Plains and is called the