Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Earth science

Western North America's jigsaw

Nature volume 496, pages 35–37 (2013)Cite this article

Subjects

The tectonic history of western North America is a puzzle in which many of the pieces are mashed up or missing. Seismic images of the deep Earth reveal features that alter our reconstruction of this puzzle in space and time. See Article p.50

The western margin of the North American continent, comprising the Cordilleran mountain chain that runs from Alaska to Mexico, consists of scores of continental jigsaw pieces of different origins, sizes and ages. They came together as Cordilleran North America was assembled in a slow dance of tectonic plates over the past 350 million years1. It has been widely accepted that one large oceanic plate, the Farallon (and fragments thereof), acted as a conveyor belt, carrying all these pieces to North America's western margin. When the plates converged, the dense oceanic plate sank into the mantle to form a slab below the lighter continent in a process called subduction. During subduction, volcanic island chains or small continental fragments on the oceanic plate were scraped off to become new North American real estate. In this issue, Sigloch and Mihalynuk2 propose a new way of putting the pieces together, involving at least two additional oceanic plates. Their analysis is based on tomographic imaging of the deep mantle using earthquake waves, which reveals previously unseen features of the oceanic jigsaw.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Get just this article for as long as you need it

$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Two potential plate scenarios for North America's Cordilleran assembly.

References

  1. Dickinson, W. R. Annu. Rev. Earth Planet. Sci. 32, 13–45 (2004).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Sigloch, K. & Mihalynuk, M. G. Nature 496, 50–56 (2013).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Coney, P. J., Jones, D. L. & Monger, J. W. H. Nature 288, 329–333 (1980).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  4. Bunge, H.-P. & Grand, S. P. Nature 405, 337–340 (2000).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Ren, Y., Stutzmann, E., van der Hilst, R. D. & Besse, J. J. Geophys. Res. 112, B01302 (2007).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  6. Chamberlain, V. E. & Lambert, R. St J. Nature 314, 707–713 (1985).

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. van der Lee, S. & Nolet, G. Nature 386, 266–269 (1997).

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Saskia Goes is in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK.,

    Saskia Goes

Authors
  1. Saskia Goes
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Saskia Goes.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Goes, S. Western North America's jigsaw. Nature 496, 35–37 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/496035a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/496035a

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing