The Grenville orogeny was a long-lived Mesoproterozoic mountain-building event associated with the assembly of the supercontinent Rodinia. Its record is a prominent orogenic belt which spans a significant portion of the North American continent, from Labrador to Mexico, as well as to Scotland.
The geology of Australia includes virtually all known rock types and from all geological time periods spanning over 3.8 billion years of the Earth's history. Australia is a continent situated on the Indo-Australian Plate.
The Pan-African orogeny was a series of major Neoproterozoic orogenic events which related to the formation of the supercontinents Gondwana and Pannotia about 600 million years ago. This orogeny is also known as the Pan-Gondwanan or Saldanian Orogeny. The Pan-African orogeny and the Grenville orogeny are the largest known systems of orogenies on Earth. The sum of the continental crust formed in the Pan-African orogeny and the Grenville orogeny makes the Neoproterozoic the period of Earth's history that has produced most continental crust.
The geology of Antarctica covers the geological development of the continent through the Archean, Proterozoic and Phanerozoic eons.
The geological history of Earth follows the major events in Earth's past based on the geological time scale, a system of chronological measurement based on the study of the planet's rock layers (stratigraphy). Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, a disk-shaped mass of dust and gas left over from the formation of the Sun, which also created the rest of the Solar System.
Gondwana or Gondwanaland was a supercontinent that existed from the Neoproterozoic and began to break up during the Jurassic, with the opening of the Drake Passage, separating South America and Antarctica occurring during the Eocene. Gondwana was not considered a supercontinent by the earliest definition, since the landmasses of Baltica, Laurentia, and Siberia were separated from it.
The geology of Massachusetts includes numerous units of volcanic, intrusive igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks formed within the last 1.2 billion years. The oldest formations are gneiss rocks in the Berkshires, which were metamorphosed from older rocks during the Proterozoic Grenville orogeny as the proto-North American continent Laurentia collided against proto-South America. Throughout the Paleozoic, overlapping the rapid diversification of multi-cellular life, a series of six island arcs collided with the Laurentian continental margin. Also termed continental terranes, these sections of continental rock typically formed offshore or onshore of the proto-African continent Gondwana and in many cases had experienced volcanic events and faulting before joining the Laurentian continent. These sequential collisions metamorphosed new rocks from sediments, created uplands and faults and resulted in widespread volcanic activity. Simultaneously, the collisions raised the Appalachian Mountains to the height of the current day Himalayas.
The Famatinian orogeny is an orogeny that predates the rise of the Andes and that took place in what is now western South America during the Paleozoic, leading to the formation of the Famatinian orogen also known as the Famatinian belt. The Famatinian orogeny lasted from the Late Cambrian to at least the Late Devonian and possibly the Early Carboniferous, with orogenic activity peaking about 490 to 460 million years ago. The orogeny involved metamorphism and deformation in the crust and the eruption and intrusion of magma along a Famatinian magmatic arc that formed a chain of volcanoes. The igneous rocks of the Famatinian magmatic arc are of calc-alkaline character and include gabbros, tonalites and granodiorites. The youngest igneous rocks of the arc are granites.
The Terra Australis Orogen (TAO) was the oceanic southern margin of Gondwana which stretched from South America to Eastern Australia and encompassed South Africa, West Antarctica, New Zealand and Victoria Land in East Antarctica.
The Pampean orogeny was an orogeny active in the Cambrian in the western margin of the ancient landmass of Gondwana. The orogen's remains can now be observed in central Argentina, in particular at the Sierras de Córdoba and other parts of the eastern Sierras Pampeanas. It is uncertain if the orogeny involved at some point a continental collision. The Pampean orogen can be considered both part of the larger Terra Australis orogen and of the Brasiliano orogeny. The Pampean orogeny was succeeded by the Famatinian orogeny further west.
The geology of Malawi formed on extremely ancient crystalline basement rock, which was metamorphosed and intruded by igneous rocks during several orogeny mountain building events in the past one billion years. The rocks of the Karoo Supergroup and newer sedimentary units deposited across much of Malawi in the last 251 million years, in connection with a large rift basin on the supercontinent Gondwana and the more recent rifting that has created the East African Rift, which holds Lake Malawi. The country has extensive mineral reserves, many of them poorly understand or not exploited, including coal, vermiculite, rare earth elements and bauxite.
The geology of Ohio formed beginning more than one billion years ago in the Proterozoic eon of the Precambrian. The igneous and metamorphic crystalline basement rock is poorly understood except through deep boreholes and does not outcrop at the surface. The basement rock is divided between the Grenville Province and Superior Province. When the Grenville Province crust collided with Proto-North America, it launched the Grenville orogeny, a major mountain building event. The Grenville mountains eroded, filling in rift basins and Ohio was flooded and periodically exposed as dry land throughout the Paleozoic. In addition to marine carbonates such as limestone and dolomite, large deposits of shale and sandstone formed as subsequent mountain building events such as the Taconic orogeny and Acadian orogeny led to additional sediment deposition. Ohio transitioned to dryland conditions in the Pennsylvanian, forming large coal swamps and the region has been dryland ever since. Until the Pleistocene glaciations erased these features, the landscape was cut with deep stream valleys, which scoured away hundreds of meters of rock leaving little trace of geologic history in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic.
The geology of Wyoming includes some of the oldest Archean rocks in North America, overlain by thick marine and terrestrial sediments formed during the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic, including oil, gas and coal deposits. Throughout its geologic history, Wyoming has been uplifted several times during the formation of the Rocky Mountains, which produced complicated faulting that traps hydrocarbons.
The geology of South Korea includes rocks dating to the Archean and two large massifs of metamorphic rock as the crystalline basement, overlain by thick sedimentary sequences, younger metamorphic rocks and volcanic deposits.
The Grampian orogeny was an orogeny mountain building event which affected Scotland in the middle of the Ordovician. At the time, Scotland was part of proto-North American continent Laurentia.
The Chonide orogeny was a mountain building event in the Triassic, preserved in coastal accretionary complexes in southwestern Chile. The Chonos Metamorphic Complex, Madre de Dios Accretionary Complex and Diego de Almagro Complex all crop out west of the South Patagonian Batholith. Rocks in the Chonos Metamorphic Complex include turbidites as well as meta-chert and mafic schist. Some researchers propose that during the Permian, the supercontinent Gondwana moved rapidly northward leading to the formation of back-arc marginal basins. The closure of the basins then resulted in the orogeny.
The Transamazonian orogeny was a mountain building event in the Paleoproterozoic, affecting what is now the São Francisco Craton and Guyana Shield. During the orogeny from 2.14 to 1.94 billion years ago two small Archean proto-continents—including the greenstone belt-dominated Gavião Block and the calc-alkaline charnockite and enderbite-dominated Jequié Block—collided. The Contendas-Jacobina Lineament represents a suture zone where the collision occurred and the Gavião Block partially subducted under the Jequié Block. At the same time, another small continental fragment, the Serrinha Block, may have collided as well and was extensively reworked and metamorphosed, with orthogneiss and migmatite reaching amphibolite-grade on the sequence of metamorphic facies. The Serrinha Block is the basement rock of the Rio Itapicuru granite-greenstone belt. Several magmatic arcs formed between the colliding proto-continent blocks, including the Salvador-Curaçá Belt, Contendas-Mirante Belt, Jacobina-Mundo Novo Belt and Itabuna-Atlantic Belt. To the west of the Gavião Block, the Guanambi-Urandi Batholith formed with monzonite, granite intrusions and syenite, which was subsequently covered by Neoproterozoic sedimentary rocks.
The Early Ruker orogeny was a mountain building event from 2.0 to 1.7 billion years ago in the Proterozoic and a key event in the assembly of Antarctica. Much of central Antarctica was added to the nucleus of the continent during this time period. The event resulted in widespread formation of intra-cratonic miogeoclinal basins. Outcrops of rocks in the southern Prince Charles Mountains contain cross-bedded shale, sandstone, conglomerate, mudstone and ironstone. Many of these rocks were deformed and metamorphosed close to the end of the orogeny around 1.7 billion years ago.
The Ross orogeny was a mountain building event in Antarctica in the early Paleozoic. The ancestral Trans-Antarctic Mountains were uplifted earlier by the Beardmore orogeny but had eroded as a broad epicratonic sea flooded much of Antarctica in the Cambrian. Shallow water sedimentary rocks, platform carbonates and deepwater turbidites from this period are found in the mountain range. The Ross orogeny was one of the most extensive orogenic events in Antarctica, causing widespread plutonism and metamorphism. Bimodal magmatism and extension mark the beginnings of the orogeny, while during the later phase sedimentary rocks at the continental margin were deformed, metamorphosed and intruded with granite batholiths. Interpretations of rock forms in Antarctica during the 1980s suggested a westward-dipping subduction zone may have formed along the paleo-Pacific Ocean shoreline of East Antarctica. This is inferred from a large number of I-type and S-type granitoids which are similar to large circum-Pacific batholiths.
The Albany-Fraser orogeny was an orogenic event which created the Albany-Fraser Orogen in what is now Australia between 2.63 and 1.16 billion years ago, during the late Archean and Proterozoic. Tectonic history developed from isotope dating suggests that the orogeny occurred as the combined North Australia Craton-West Australia Craton collided with the East Antarctic-South Australian Craton. The Kepa Kurl Booya Province, including its component zones, the Fraser Zone, Nornalup Zone and Biranup Zone represents the crystalline basement of the orogen. Numerous theories and hypotheses have been presented about the orogeny. For example, in 2011 geochronology dating of 1.71 to 1.65 billion year old granite and gabbro intrusions in the Biranup Zone suggested craton margin rocks rather than a previously interrupted small terrane wedged against the Yilgarn Craton. In other cases, researchers attempting to reconstruct the supercontinent Rodinia suggested a possible connection between Australia-Antarctica and the proto-North American continent Laurentia, but in 2003 paleomagnetic data from the Albany-Fraser orogeny suggested that Australia and Laurentia were at different latitudes.
