![]() The transverse element arises when the continent reaches the Mid ocean Ridge in this case the East pacific rise. This similarly playing out with South America over the last few tens of millions of years and has resulted in the Amazon rising out of the Caribbean sea and this happened sometime back in the Cretaceous rising North America up in elevation and triggering major mountain building processes similar to the Andes of South America. It all began as normal subduction zone activity but in North America's case the subduction started advancing further into younger and younger marine crust which is less dense as it hasn't had time to consolidate and accumulate lots of sediment thus it sort of gets stuck driving tectonic uplift. In this context you need to know HOW the transform fault aroseĮffectively what has been happening is that through the Cretaceous period into today North America has been moving to the southwest and it is this ultimately south west movement which plays a critical role in shaping the west coast. So you mean a transform fault boundary where the two plates are sliding past each other?Ĭurrently the main example of such a fault is the San Andreas which is the border between the pacific plate and North America but as the geology is quite complex separating the transverse component from what is ongoing will not be as straightforward. ![]()
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