MadSci Network: Earth Sciences
Query:

Re: what are the smokey mountians made of?

Date: Mon Apr 14 17:50:19 2008
Posted By: David Smith, Director of Professional Development
Area of science: Earth Sciences
ID: 1208111267.Es
Message:

The Great Smokey Mountains are primarily composed of Precambrian age
metamorphic rocks.  

Those rocks began as sedimentary rocks, shales (layers of mud), sandstones
(layers of sand), and conglomerates (layers of gravel).  They were
deposited in an ocean basin between about 800 million years ago and 550
million years ago.  They were buried deeply under more sediments and then
they were heated up and folded up as part of a major mountain building
event called the Alleghenian orogeny, about 250 million years ago.  In this
event, the rocks were metamorphosed into phylites, schists, and quartzites
that now make up the bulk of the Great Smokey Mountains.

For more detail and a map showing where the rocks are, see:  
 http://www.uwm.edu/Course/geosci697-tectonic/GroupD/IntroPage/IntroPage.html

The USGS also has a lot more detailed information in a Professional Paper:
 http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1225/

David Smith
Da Vinci Science Center


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