Evidence for a large Paleozoic Impact Crater Strewn Field in the Rocky Mountains

Lee-side Frontogenesis in the Rocky Mountains

The development and motion of fronts associated with lee-side troughs on large mountain barriers has been investigated. These fronts differ from ordinary cold fronts in their horizontal temperature field, which is characterized by a sinusoidal thermal ridge. The thermal ridge intensifies, while remaining stationary with respect to the mountains, and moves eastward upon the approach of a Pacific...

Changing Climate Suitability for Forests in Yellowstone & the Rocky Mountains

Fault dating in the Canadian Rocky Mountains: Evidence for late Cretaceous and early Eocene orogenic pulses

Fault rocks from the classic Rocky Mountain foreland fold-and-thrust belt in southwestern Canada were dated by Ar analysis of clay grain-size fractions. Using X-ray diffraction quantification of the detrital and authigenic component of each fraction, these determinations give ages for individual faults in the area (illite age analysis). The resulting ages cluster around 72 and 52 Ma (here calle...

Paleozoic metamorphism in the Qinling orogen, Tongbai Mountains, central China

The Qinling orogen (Fig. 1) extends for over 2000 km across central China, separating the Archean and Proterozoic Sino-Korean block in the north from the Proterozoic Yangtze block in the south. Although the orogen has been recognized as a continental collision zone for some time, the nature, age, and duration of the collision have been the subject of considerable debate (see review in Hacker et...

A continuous climatic impact on Holocene human population in the Rocky Mountains.

Ancient cultural changes have often been linked to abrupt climatic events, but the potential that climate can exert a persistent influence on human populations has been debated. Here, independent population, temperature, and moisture history reconstructions from the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming (United States) show a clear quantitative relationship spanning 13 ka, which explains five major periods ...