At the beginning of the Triassic Period, the present continents of the world were grouped together into one large C-shaped supercontinent named Pangea. Covering about one-quarter of the Earth’s surface, Pangea stretched from 85° N to 90° S in a narrow belt of about 60° of longitude. It consisted of a group of northern continents collectively referred to as Laurasia and a group of southern continents collectively referred to as Gondwana. The rest of the globe was covered by Panthalassa, an enormous world ocean that stretched from pole to pole and extended to about twice the width of the present-day Pacific Ocean at the Equator. Scattered across Panthalassa within 30° of the Triassic Equator were islands, seamounts, and volcanic archipelagoes, some associated with deposits of reef carbonates now found in western North America and other locations.
Projecting westward between Gondwana and Laurasia along an east-west axis approximately coincident with the present-day Mediterranean Sea was a deep embayment of Panthalassa known as the Tethys Sea. This ancient seaway was later to extend farther westward to Gibraltar as rifting between Laurasia and Gondwana began in the Late Triassic. Eventually, by Middle to Late Jurassic times, it would link up with the eastern side of Panthalassa, effectively separating the two halves of the Pangea supercontinent. Paleogeographers reconstruct these continental configurations using evidence from many sources, the most important of which are paleomagnetic data and correspondences between continental margins in shape, rock types, orogenic (mountain-building) events, and distribution of fossilized plants and land vertebrates that lived prior to the breakup of Pangea. In addition, the apparent polar-wandering curves (plots of the apparent movement of the Earth’s magnetic poles with respect to the continents through time) for modern-day Africa and North America converge between the Carboniferous and Triassic periods and then begin to diverge in the Late Triassic, which indicates the exact time when the two continents began to separate and the Tethys Sea began to open up.
Thick sequences of clastic sediments accumulated in marginal troughs bordering the present-day circum-Pacific region as well as the northern and southern margins of the Tethys, while shelf seas occupied parts of the Tethyan, circum-Pacific, and circum-Arctic regions but were otherwise restricted in distribution. Much of the circum-Pacific region and the northeastern part of Tethys were bordered by active (that is, convergent) plate margins, but the northwestern and southern margins of Tethys were passive (that is, divergent) during the Triassic. At the end of the Triassic, increased tectonic activity contributed to rising sea levels and an increase in the extent of shallow continental shelf seas.
Along the western margin of modern North America, a major subduction zone was present where the eastward-moving oceanic plate of eastern Panthalassa slid under the continental plate of Pangea. The Panthalassa plate carried fragments of island arcs and microcontinents that, because of their lesser density, could not be subducted along with the oceanic plate. As these fragments reached the subduction zone, they were sutured onto the Cordilleran belt of North America, forming what geologists refer to as allochthonous terranes (fragments of crust displaced from their site of origin). This process of “accretionary tectonics” (or obduction) created more than 50 terranes of various ages in the Cordilleran region, including the Sonomia and Golconda terranes of the northwestern United States, both of which were accreted in the Early Triassic. The former microcontinent of Sonomia occupies what is now southeastern Oregon and northern California and Nevada
Projecting westward between Gondwana and Laurasia along an east-west axis approximately coincident with the present-day Mediterranean Sea was a deep embayment of Panthalassa known as the Tethys Sea. This ancient seaway was later to extend farther westward to Gibraltar as rifting between Laurasia and Gondwana began in the Late Triassic. Eventually, by Middle to Late Jurassic times, it would link up with the eastern side of Panthalassa, effectively separating the two halves of the Pangea supercontinent. Paleogeographers reconstruct these continental configurations using evidence from many sources, the most important of which are paleomagnetic data and correspondences between continental margins in shape, rock types, orogenic (mountain-building) events, and distribution of fossilized plants and land vertebrates that lived prior to the breakup of Pangea. In addition, the apparent polar-wandering curves (plots of the apparent movement of the Earth’s magnetic poles with respect to the continents through time) for modern-day Africa and North America converge between the Carboniferous and Triassic periods and then begin to diverge in the Late Triassic, which indicates the exact time when the two continents began to separate and the Tethys Sea began to open up.
Thick sequences of clastic sediments accumulated in marginal troughs bordering the present-day circum-Pacific region as well as the northern and southern margins of the Tethys, while shelf seas occupied parts of the Tethyan, circum-Pacific, and circum-Arctic regions but were otherwise restricted in distribution. Much of the circum-Pacific region and the northeastern part of Tethys were bordered by active (that is, convergent) plate margins, but the northwestern and southern margins of Tethys were passive (that is, divergent) during the Triassic. At the end of the Triassic, increased tectonic activity contributed to rising sea levels and an increase in the extent of shallow continental shelf seas.
Along the western margin of modern North America, a major subduction zone was present where the eastward-moving oceanic plate of eastern Panthalassa slid under the continental plate of Pangea. The Panthalassa plate carried fragments of island arcs and microcontinents that, because of their lesser density, could not be subducted along with the oceanic plate. As these fragments reached the subduction zone, they were sutured onto the Cordilleran belt of North America, forming what geologists refer to as allochthonous terranes (fragments of crust displaced from their site of origin). This process of “accretionary tectonics” (or obduction) created more than 50 terranes of various ages in the Cordilleran region, including the Sonomia and Golconda terranes of the northwestern United States, both of which were accreted in the Early Triassic. The former microcontinent of Sonomia occupies what is now southeastern Oregon and northern California and Nevada
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