Middle American Terranes, Potential Correlatives, and Orogenic Processes

Highlights include:

·       An update on the geographic record, tectonic setting, and provenance of these terranes

·       Documentation of allocthonous nature and position peripheral to Amazonia of the ~1 Ga basement of southern Mexico

·       Data demonstrating that the basement rocks were involved in several Phanerozoic tectonic events

·       An examination of new evidence of a Late Paleozoic event associated with the amalgamation of Pangea overprinting the ~1 Ga basement and the Paleozoic units lying chiefly to the west and south of it

·       An exploration of the following potential correlatives: (1) events in Europe on the northern margin of Gondwana; (2) the Late Silurian-Devonian Acadian orogeny in the Appalachian, which is inferred to have resulted from flat-slab subduction related to overriding a plume; and (3) Mesozoic-Cenozoic events along the western margin of Laurentia

·       A discussion of possible mechanisms for the initiation of orogeny, flat-slab subduction in the Laramide orogeny, and hypotheses relating to the amalgamation and breakup of supercontine