The Farallon Plate

  • Credit

    NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Farallon Plate sinks beneath North American Plate and scrapes along bottom of continent for 1,500 kilometers before sinking again

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. Crust that had accumulated above the sinking plate then bobbed up like a cork to form the Rocky Mountains.

Metadata

  • Sensor

  • Animation ID

    1322

  • Video ID

    SVS2000-0026

  • Start Timecode

    01:06:48:27

  • End Timecode

    01:07:54:13

  • Animator

    James W. Williams

  • Studio

    SVS

  • Visualization Date

    2000/10/11

  • Scientist

    Hans-Peter Bunge (Princeton University)

  • Keywords

    Farallon Plate, Rocky Mountains, Plate Tectonics, Subduction

  • Data Date

    none

  • Animation Type

    Regular