Interior Basins, Drainage Integration and Deep Incision: Late Miocene to Pliocene: Ca. 10–2.6 Ma

Abstract

As the story of the North American Cordillera approaches its current scene, the intervals of time that are segregated from one another become much shorter. Generally, this is due to more closely spaced data points highlighting the changing tectonic and sedimentary environments. However, some aspects of the Cordillera’s recent history are no better understood than events that happened hundreds of millions of years ago. After all, a thick sequence of marine limestone spanning tens of millions of years reveals quite clearly the environments that could not have existed for that long span of time. It might seem counterintuitive at first glance that older events could be as well, or even better known, than more recent ones. But knowing that the recent history of the Cordillera involves many periods of uplift, faulting, volcanism, erosion, and drainage reorganization shows why this is so. A wide variety of processes have been active in the recent past and the interplay between them explains why significant uncertainties remain about the Cordillera’s recent past.

The original version of this chapter was revised. An erratum to this chapter can be found at DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-59636-5_14