Does anyone have a scientific idea as to how the Rocky Mountains chain formed?
by 
ethicalbro
ANSWERS: 2
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plate tectonics
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From Wikipedia article on 'Rocky Mountains' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_mountains The younger ranges of the Rocky Mountains uplifted during the late Cretaceous period (100 million – 65 million years ago), although some portions of the southern mountains date from uplifts during the Precambrian (3,980 million – 600 million years ago). The mountains' geology is a complex of igneous and metamorphic rock; younger sedimentary rock occurs along the margins of the southern Rocky Mountains, and volcanic rock from the Tertiary (65 million – 1.8 million years ago) occurs in the San Juan Mountains and in other areas. Millennia of severe erosion in the Wyoming Basin transformed intermountain basins into a relatively flat terrain. The Tetons and other north-central ranges contain folded and faulted rocks of Paleozoic and Mesozoic age draped above cores of Proterozoic and Archean igneous and metamorphic rocks ranging in age from 1.2 billion (e.g., Tetons) to more than 3.3 billion years (Beartooth Mountains).[1]
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