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Insular Plate
The Insular Plate was an ancient oceanic plate that began subducting under the west-coast of North America around the early Cretaceous period. The Insular Plate had a chain of active volcanic islands that were called the Insular Islands. These volcanic islands, however, collided then fused onto the west-coast of North America when the Insular Plate jammed then shut down ending the subduction zone. See also *Insular Mountains The Insular Mountains are a range of mountains in the Pacific Coast Ranges on the Coast of British Columbia, Canada, comprising the Vancouver Island Ranges and Queen Charlotte Mountains. The Insular Mountains are rugged, particularly on Vancou ... References Natural history of North America Tectonic plates Historical tectonic plates Cretaceous geology Cenozoic geology {{Palaeo-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insular Omineca Arcs
Insular is an adjective used to describe: * An island * Someone who is isolated and parochial Insular may also refer to: Sub-national territories or regions * Insular Chile * Insular region of Colombia * Insular Ecuador, administratively known as Galápagos Province * Insular Region (Equatorial Guinea) * Insular Italy * Insular Portugal, comprises the Madeira and Azores Autonomous Regions * Insular Southeast Asia * Insular areas of the United States ** Insular Cases, a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 1901, about the status of U.S. territories acquired in the Spanish–American War ** Bureau of Insular Affairs, a unit of the U.S. government's War Department which administered certain insular areas from 1902 to 1939 ** Office of Insular Affairs, a unit of the U.S. Department of the Interior that oversees federal administration of several insular areas (and the successor to the Bureau of Insular Affairs). ** Insular Government of the Philippine Islands, the U.S. ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oceanic Plate
Oceanic crust is the uppermost layer of the oceanic portion of the tectonic plates. It is composed of the upper oceanic crust, with pillow lavas and a dike complex, and the lower oceanic crust, composed of troctolite, gabbro and ultramafic cumulates. The crust overlies the rigid uppermost layer of the mantle. The crust and the rigid upper mantle layer together constitute oceanic lithosphere. Oceanic crust is primarily composed of mafic rocks, or sima, which is rich in iron and magnesium. It is thinner than continental crust, or sial, generally less than 10 kilometers thick; however, it is denser, having a mean density of about 3.0 grams per cubic centimeter as opposed to continental crust which has a density of about 2.7 grams per cubic centimeter. The crust uppermost is the result of the cooling of magma derived from mantle material below the plate. The magma is injected into the spreading center, which consists mainly of a partly solidified crystal mush derived from earli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subduct
Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at convergent boundaries. Where the oceanic lithosphere of a tectonic plate converges with the less dense lithosphere of a second plate, the heavier plate dives beneath the second plate and sinks into the mantle. A region where this process occurs is known as a subduction zone, and its surface expression is known as an arc-trench complex. The process of subduction has created most of the Earth's continental crust. Rates of subduction are typically measured in centimeters per year, with the average rate of convergence being approximately two to eight centimeters per year along most plate boundaries. Subduction is possible because the cold oceanic lithosphere is slightly denser than the underlying asthenosphere, the hot, ductile layer in the upper mantle underlying the cold, rigid lithosphere. Once initiated, stable subduction is driven mostly by the negative buoyancy of the de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. Because it is on the North American Plate, North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as a part of North America geographically. North America covers an area of about , about 16.5% of Earth's land area and about 4.8% of its total surface. North America is the third-largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the list of continents and continental subregions by population, fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 579 million people in List of sovereign states and dependent territories in North America, 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's population. In Americas (terminology)#Human ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of the entire Phanerozoic. The name is derived from the Latin ''creta'', " chalk", which is abundant in the latter half of the period. It is usually abbreviated K, for its German translation ''Kreide''. The Cretaceous was a period with a relatively warm climate, resulting in high eustatic sea levels that created numerous shallow inland seas. These oceans and seas were populated with now-extinct marine reptiles, ammonites, and rudists, while dinosaurs continued to dominate on land. The world was ice free, and forests extended to the poles. During this time, new groups of mammals and birds appeared. During the Early Cretaceous, flowering plants appeared and began to rapidly diversify, becoming the dominant group of plants across the Ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Volcanic Island
Geologically, a high island or volcanic island is an island of volcanic origin. The term can be used to distinguish such islands from low islands, which are formed from sedimentation or the uplifting of coral reefs (which have often formed on sunken volcanos). Definition and origin There are a number of "high islands" that rise no more than above sea level, often classified as " islets or rocks", while some low islands, such as Banaba, Henderson Island, Makatea, Nauru, and Niue, as uplifted coral islands, rise over above sea level. The two types of islands are often found in proximity to each other, especially among the islands of the South Pacific Ocean, where low islands are found on the fringing reefs that surround most high islands. Volcanic islands normally arise above a hotspot. Habitability High islands above a certain size usually have fresh groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insular Islands
The Insular Islands were an extended chain of volcanic islands forming an arc in what is now the Pacific Ocean during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. The islands formed by subduction and melting of the Farallon Plate along a fragment (or microplate) upon which they rose called the Insular Plate. They were bounded by the Panthalassic Ocean to the west and the Bridge River Ocean to the east. They probably formed as a composite of several volcanic chains near the equator, offshore of continental landmasses, by the Carboniferous Period around 300-325 million years ago. The chain continually moved northward during the Mesozoic. About 115 million years ago in the mid-Cretaceous they finally collided with and fused onto the North American Plate. Like the earlier Intermontane Islands which underwent a similar continental accretion 60 million years before, the large mass of the islands prevented them from being pushed under the North American Plate. This violent collision halted subducti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insular Mountains
The Insular Mountains are a range of mountains in the Pacific Coast Ranges on the Coast of British Columbia, Canada, comprising the Vancouver Island Ranges and Queen Charlotte Mountains. The Insular Mountains are rugged, particularly on Vancouver Island where peaks in Strathcona Provincial Park rise to elevations of more than . The highest of these mountains is Golden Hinde on Vancouver Island, which rises to . Although the Coast Mountain Range is usually referred to as the westernmost range of the Pacific Cordillera (since it is the westernmost range on the main landmass at that point), the Insular Mountains are the true westernmost range. Geological history These Insular Mountains are not yet fully emerged above sea level, and Vancouver Island and the Haida Gwaii are just the higher elevations of the range, which was in fact fully exposed during the last glacial period (maximum ice extent about 18,000 years ago) when the continental shelf in this area was a broad coastal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural History Of North America
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are part of nature, human activity is often understood as a separate category from other natural phenomena. The word ''nature'' is borrowed from the Old French ''nature'' and is derived from the Latin word ''natura'', or "essential qualities, innate disposition", and in ancient times, literally meant "birth". In ancient philosophy, ''natura'' is mostly used as the Latin translation of the Greek word ''physis'' (φύσις), which originally related to the intrinsic characteristics of plants, animals, and other features of the world to develop of their own accord. The concept of nature as a whole, the physical universe, is one of several expansions of the original notion; it began with certain core applications of the word φύσις by pre-Socr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tectonic Plates
Plate tectonics (from the la, label=Late Latin, tectonicus, from the grc, τεκτονικός, lit=pertaining to building) is the generally accepted scientific theory that considers the Earth's lithosphere to comprise a number of large tectonic plates which have been slowly moving since about 3.4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of ''continental drift'', an idea developed during the first decades of the 20th century. Plate tectonics came to be generally accepted by geoscientists after seafloor spreading was validated in the mid to late 1960s. Earth's lithosphere, which is the rigid outermost shell of the planet (the crust and upper mantle), is broken into seven or eight major plates (depending on how they are defined) and many minor plates or "platelets". Where the plates meet, their relative motion determines the type of plate boundary: '' convergent'', '' divergent'', or '' transform''. Earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historical Tectonic Plates
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and ecological markers. History is not complete and still has debatable mysteries. History is also an academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians often debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history as an end in itself, as well as its usefulness to give perspective on the problems of the p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cretaceous Geology
The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of the entire Phanerozoic. The name is derived from the Latin ''creta'', "chalk", which is abundant in the latter half of the period. It is usually abbreviated K, for its German translation ''Kreide''. The Cretaceous was a period with a relatively warm climate, resulting in high eustatic sea levels that created numerous shallow inland seas. These oceans and seas were populated with now- extinct marine reptiles, ammonites, and rudists, while dinosaurs continued to dominate on land. The world was ice free, and forests extended to the poles. During this time, new groups of mammals and birds appeared. During the Early Cretaceous, flowering plants appeared and began to rapidly diversify, becoming the dominant group of plants across the Earth by t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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