Alleghanian orogeny

The late Paleozoic mountain-building episode caused chiefly by collision between Gondwana and Laurentia. It uplifted the central and southern Appalachians and contributed to Pangaea’s assembly.

Pangaea: The supercontinent assembled from most of Earth’s landmasses during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic. Its assembly culminated in the continental collision that drove this mountain-building episode.
Orogeny: A prolonged episode of mountain building caused by tectonic deformation, magmatism, and crustal thickening. The Alleghanian event is one named episode of mountain building.
Blue Ridge Mountains: A mountain range extending from Pennsylvania through the southern Appalachian region into Georgia. Alleghanian compression reworked rocks in this prominent part of the Appalachian belt.
Central Pangean Mountains: A broad late Paleozoic mountain belt formed during the assembly of Pangaea. The Alleghanian orogeny contributed to this much larger system of collision-built mountains.
Alleghanian orogeny chronology: The sequence and timing of deformation associated with the Alleghanian mountain-building episode. Its stages varied across the Appalachian belt, complicating a single start or end date.
Laurentia: An ancient continental core that underlies much of present-day North America and parts of Greenland and Scotland. Laurentia formed the western side of the collision zone that raised the Appalachians.
Plate tectonics: The theory that Earth’s lithosphere consists of moving plates whose interactions reshape the planet. Plate convergence explains the continental collision that drove this event.
Piedmont (United States): A geologic and physiographic region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic Coastal Plain. Its deformed rocks preserve evidence of the collision’s effects east of the mountain front.
Alleghanian orogeny in Europe: The late Paleozoic deformation associated with Pangaea’s assembly in parts of western and central Europe. Comparable collision-related mountain building extended across the Atlantic from the Appalachian region.
U-Pb dating: A radiometric dating method that uses uranium decay to determine ages of minerals and rocks. Dated minerals help constrain when Appalachian rocks were buried, deformed, and cooled.

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