The Cordilleran Orogenic Belt is a region of dominant Mesozoic and Cenozoic deformation that extends for 8,000 km along the western side of North America from Alaska to Guatemala and Honduras, with a width of 650–1,600 km. West-ward from Alaska it is separated by only a short stretch of shallow water from comparable orogenic belts in Asia. Beyond Guatemala and Honduras in Central America, the rocks and structures differ from those to the north; they are not considered here.
On the east the Cordilleran Belt is bordered along most of its extent by the central craton of North America, but in Alaska it fronts on the coastal plain of the Arctic Ocean and in Mexico, on the coastal plain of the Gulf of Mexico (Fig. 1). On the west the belt is bordered along its entire length by the Pacific Ocean, without coastal plains and only narrow continental shelves. In the northwest the Pacific shore is closely paralleled by the Aleutian Trench, and in the south, by the Middle America Trench, both with...
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King, P.B. (1987). Cordilleran orogenic belt . In: Structural Geology and Tectonics. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31080-0_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31080-0_20
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