Acadian orogeny

The Acadian orogeny is a middle Paleozoic deformation, especially in the northern Appalachians, between New York and Newfoundland. In Gaspé and adjacent areas, its climax is dated as early in the Late Devonian, but deformational, plutonic, and metamorphic events extended into Early Mississippian time. The Acadian should be regarded, not as a single orogenic episode, but rather as an orogenic era.

It appears to have been contemporaneous with the Bretonic phase of the Variscan orogeny of Europe, with metamorphic events in southwestern Texas and northern Mexico, and with the Antler orogeny of the Great Basin.

A period of lithospheric thinning that followed the Acadian orogeny created volcanoes, such as the large Mount Pleasant Caldera in southwestern New Brunswick, Canada.

ee also

* Orogeny - 'mountain building'
* Iapetus Ocean
* Taconic orogeny

References

*Dictionary of Geological Terms, 3rd. Edition,1984, Robert L. Bates and Julia A. Jackson, Eds., prepared by The American Geological Institute
*International Tectonic Dictionary, 1967, Memoir 7, "Am. Assoc. Petroleum Geologists", p. 114