Rocky Mountain High: Mystery of the Origins of the Rockies Solved!

The Daily Galaxy ^ | March 2, 2011 | Unknown

[decimon]

The formation of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado has puzzled scientists for decades. Some 600 miles inland and far removed from the nearest tectonic plate, the only comparable inland mountain range is the Himalaya, which were formed by the collision of the Indian plate with the Eurasian

"But there really was no India slamming into North America," said Craig Jones, a research fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "Just how the Rockies have formed is an enigma." But based on new research, Jones and his team of researchers have proposed a new model of the mountains' formation that not only explains the origin of the Rockies, but also explains other geological phenomena: such as why a swath of gold, silver and other precious metal deposits stretches across Colorado, and why a marine basin deepened in the states of Colorado and Wyoming just before the Rockies rose. The sediments of this marine basin are the Pierre Shale, a layer of dark-gray shale lying along the Front Range of Colorado.

[decimon]

Via SunkenCiv

[decimon]

Ping

[Rebelbase]

"Jones and his team of researchers have proposed a new model of the mountains' formation that not only explains the origin of the Rockies, but also explains other geological phenomena: such as why a swath of gold, silver and other precious metal deposits stretches across Colorado,"

The bold text is not disclosed in the article. I guess you have to buy the research for that nugget.

[PapaBear3625]

The new model hinges on an unusually thick lithosphere – the stiff part of the Earth's surface that make up the tectonic plates – under Wyoming. The protrusion of this keel into more fluid mantle flowing below, created a suction that pulled down Southern Wyoming and Colorado and formed a basin, Jones said. This basin, or hole, in which Pierre Shale built up, amplified mountain-building forces far inland and forced the formation of the Rockies, he said.

"A huge basin develops and all of a sudden these mountains come rocketing out of it," Jones added. "We end up with the counter-intuitive visage of mountains rising up out of a hole. "

If you've gotta excerpt, have the excerpt be the money quote rather than the teaser.

[Darksheare]

Farallon plate also plays a role.

[st.eqed]

Having grown up in Colorado, I am interested in geology even though I am just a novice. I read a book a couple years ago that challenged everything I was taught about the subject. I am not saying everything the book said was gospel, but it does ask the questions. The book was called “Earth’s Catastrophic Past”. It was a two volume set, but the second part is where it got really interesting. In a nutshell, it was the Global Flood. The evidence is impressive.

[ETL]

I had read that the Rockies formed far away from a subduction zone (western edge of the NA continent in this case), in part, due to the comparatively rapid rate of North American plate motion/mid-Atlantic spreading back at the time of their formation. The quick rate led to a relatively shallow angle of subduction which ‘rumpled’ the overlying crust like a rug being pushed from one end toward the center. The less steep subduction angle also meant the subducting slab wouldn’t reach melting depths until much further from the plate edge, thus volcanism and mineral processing occurred further inland as well.

[muawiyah]

You will find that people who find gold only hint at its location ~

[Thebaddog]

It reads as if we can infer the correlation between two events but not the mechanism that caused the events to occur. IMHO, there was a lot og geological power in play to push up the mountains and in a linear fashion.

[Mr. K]

I agree with you- there is evidence of some very strange major flooding

Look at the “badlands” in the upper midwest- they really are amazing, and show evidence of huge gushing water

[JimRed]

The book was called “Earth’s Catastrophic Past”.

Another that would be of interest is "Worlds in Collision" (Immanuel Velikovsky, ca. 1950). Interesting theory, based on well researched evidence.

[Hebrews 11:6]

I always just figured it was Todd Helton .

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon.

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[SunkenCiv]

Along with “Earth in Upheaval”.

[Fred Nerks]

EARTH IN UPHEAVAL.

PAGE 65

Mountain Thrusts in the Alps and Elsewhere

THE AGE of a rock formation is ascertained with the help
of the fossils it contains. To the surprise of many scientists, it was found that mountains have traveled, since
older formations have been pushed over on top of
younger ones.
Chief Mountain in Montana is a massif standing several
thousand feet above the Great Plains. It “has been
thrust bodily upon the much younger strata of the Great
Plains, and then driven over them eastward, for a distance
of at least eight miles. Indeed, the thrust may have been
several times eight miles,” writes Daly.1
“By similar thrusting, the whole Rocky Mountain
Front, for hundreds of miles, has been pushed up and
then out, many miles over the plains.”

Such titanic displacements of mountains have been
found in many places on the earth. The displacement of
the Alps is especially extensive.
“During the building of the Alps gigantic slabs of rock,
thousands of feet thick, hundreds of miles long, and tens
of miles wide, were thrust up and then over, relatively to
the rocks beneath. The direction of the relative overthrusting movement was from Africa toward the main
mass of Europe on the north. The visible rocks of the
northern Alps of Switzerland have thus been shoved
northward distances of the order of 100 miles. In a sense
the Alps used to be on the present site of northern
Italy.” ...