Caledonian orogeny Caledonian orogeny The Caledonian orogeny was a mountain-building era recorded in the northern parts of Ireland and Britain, the Scandinavian Mountains, Svalbard, eastern Greenland and parts of north-central Europe. The Caledonian orogeny encompasses events that occurred from the Ordovician to Early Devonian, roughly 490–390 million years ago (Ma). It was caused by the closure of the Iapetus Ocean when the continents and terranes of Laurentia, Baltica and Avalonia collided. The Caledonian orogeny is named for Caledonia, the Latin name for Scotland. The name was first used in 1885 by Austrian geologist Eduard Suess for an episode of mountain building in
Trans-Hudson orogeny Yavapai province (see Trans-Hudson Orogen map and the THOT Transect map. To the south, the orogen contributed to the subsurface Phanerozoic strata in Montana and the Dakotas that created the Great Plains. The Trans-Hudson orogeny was the culminating event of the Paleoproterozoic Laurentian assembly, which occurred after the Wopmay orogeny (West of Hudson Bay, ca. 2.1-1.9 Ga.). The Trans-Hudson orogeny resulted from the collision of the Superior Craton of eastern Canada with the Hearne Craton in northern Saskatchewan and the Wyoming Craton of the western United States, with the Archean microcontinent Sask Craton trapped in the THO western interior. Similar