The California Archipelago

[North America, 310 million years ago; map by Ron Blakey.]

While in Santa Barabara this weekend, my wife read somewhere that the Santa Ynez mountains run east-west, unlike nearly every other mountain range in North America, which run north-south. I thought it might have something to do with the fact that California sits atop a point where two or three tectonic plates meet. We all know about the San Andreas fault line, of course, but if I remember correctly from my reading of Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything earlier this year, it's more complex than just San Andreas.

Lo and behold bldgblog was pondering the same thing while vacationing in Death Valley last week. Lucky for me, he went and found all kinds of information, including some gorgeous maps depicting the formation of North America (and more specifically, California) over the last 550 million years.

Comments

[julio]

my map