Farallon Plate remnants
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a002400/a002410/index.html

Stuart Snodgrass, Hans-Peter Bunge, NASA GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio, Princeton University


The Rockies are fifteen hundred kilometers, or one thousand
miles, to the east. The cause must be the tectonic plate that built these
mountains. Its name is Farallon. Farallon started off normally enough. It
plunged beneath the North American Plate at a forty-five degree angle. This
process sprouted volcanoes to form the Sierra Nevada in what is now California.
Next, mantle motions pulled North America westward over Farallon, and the plate
scraped along the bottom of the continent - for fifteen hundred kilometers. As
North America continued its westward trek, Farallon settled to the bottom of
the mantle.

This description of a site outside SERC has not been vetted by SERC staff and may be incomplete or incorrect. If you have information we can use to flesh out or correct this record let us know.



Subject: Geoscience:Geology:Geophysics:Geodynamics, Geoscience:Geology:Structural Geology
Resource Type: Audio/Visual:Animations/Video
Grade Level: Graduate/Professional, College Upper (15-16), College Lower (13-14)
Theme: Teach the Earth:Course Topics:Structural Geology, GeophysicsKeywords: Farallon Plate, TERRA software