Adirondack Mountains Research Paper

Tucker DePaola
GEOL 105
Final Project Paper
5/11/18

Exploring the Geologic History of the Adirondack Mountains The Adirondack Mountains are massif in northeastern New York state which were formed about 2 billion years ago and have since underwent a number of geologic events which have shaped the mountains’ appearance and history to make them the way they are in the present day. The massif itself is a dissected elongate dome which exposes a core of Proterozoic metamorphic rock from which Paleozoic cover rocks have been eroded. The dome has a northern pointing axis that measures about 190 kilometers long while its east-west dimension is about 140 kilometers in length. The Adirondack massif is quite unique in the sense that it is an anomalous …show more content…
The mountains are divided into the Adirondack highlands and lowlands by a broad zone of high strain known as the Carthage-Colton Shear Zone. Currently, the lowlands region is located northwest of the highlands, and is about a third of the size of the highland region. Both the highlands and lowlands are comprised of large amounts of metaigneous rocks that represent recent additions of juvenile continental crust (McLelland, 1991). The massif’s history is defined by events related to the Grenville Orogeny in North America. Only until recently, conflicting theories regarding the history were mostly speculative and unconfirmed, until technology using zircon U/Pb SHRIMP2 geochronology along with isotope geochemical research provided a more complete understanding of the evolution of the Grenville Orogen. The isotopic compositions of the Adirondacks are on the same Pb–Pb array as the compositions of the Grenville Province, which proves both were developed on Laurentian crust. The Grenville orogeny is considered the defining tectonic event that ended about 500 million years of continental margin growth along southern Laurentia from accretion, continental arc magmatism, and metamorphism. From these three processes, the Adirondacks were formed (McLelland et al., …show more content…
The events leading up to and during the Grenville Orogeny had a profound effect on the formation of mountainous regions across the globe, a remarkable feat, considering the distance between these locations in the present day. As a result of recent research and development of new technology, geologists are now able to track the geologic continuity of crusts around the world, hoping to match more isotopic compositions to add further detail to the theories of continental drift and the existence of super continents. As plates continue to move ever so slightly each day, it is staggering to contemplate where the Adirondack Mountains could be millions of years into the

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