Introduction The Appalachian Mobile Belt is a mountain range that currently extends more than 3,000 kilometers, from Newfoundland, Canada all the way to Alabama in the United States of America. In the past, before the continents separated, the Appalachians also extended into what we know as Europe. The belt primarily consisted of five main orogenies: the Taconian, the Acadian, the Caledonian, the Hercynian, and the Alleghenian orogenies. In this paper, our focus will be the Acadian orogeny. Out of the five orogenies that made the Appalachians, the Acadian was the longest and most intense orogeny (Wicander R., Monroe J., 2015). The Acadian was also the third orogeny to affect Laurentia and Baltica. This orogeny affected the Appalachian belt…show more content… (2000), the primary study area was taken along the Acadian-deformed belt of Maine, parts of Vermont and several parts from Canada. The study defined four deep-water Silurian basins, which are underwater depressions. The basins were defined as the Connecticut Valley-Gaspé Basin, the Aroostook-Matapedia Basin, the Fredericton Basin, and the Central Maine Basin. Flanking these basins, there are four tracts that contain belts where pre-Silurian rocks are exposed. These belts where deemed as important due to the fact that they were either undergoing active erosion during at part of the Silurian time period or the location of shallow-water deposition. Bradley and his team learned that these shallow water deposits include carbonate and siliciclastic rocks, and used these rocks to track the movement of the…show more content… et al, 2000). However, new information has surfaced to suggest otherwise. The new data indicates the Acadian orogeny originated between the Silurian and Devonian time periods, giving the belt an age around 418 Ma (Bradley D. et al, 2000). Data also shows that some Silurian plutons have been found in the Acadian mountain range. The Silurian plutons were recorded to have reappeared in the Early Devonian period; the rest of the plutons have been dated within the last 5 million years of the Silurian period (Bradley D. et al, 2000). The Acadian lasted roughly 50 million years, one of the longest lasting orogenies in the Appalachian Mobile Belt. During the Early Devonian period, weathering and erosion along the Acadian highlands developed the Catskill delta, an exposed, thick wedge composed of detrital sedimentary rocks (Wicander R., Monroe J., 2015). The Catskill Delta continued to erode past the climax of the Acadian orogeny. This delta is one of the primary sources of rocks that have been researched from the Acadian
