Suspect terranes and accretionary history of the Appalachian orogen

Terrane processes at the margins of Gondwana: introduction

“…When Wilson (1966) asked if the Atlantic had closed and then reopened, the closure he referred to was between Gondwana and Laurentia. Williams & Hatcher (1982; demonstrated that this closure had incorporated many exotic terranes in one of the first demonstrations of the utility of the terrane collage model of Coney et al (1980). Hibbard et aL (2005) present a re-examination of the Gondwana-Laurentia terrane-collision orogeny in the Carolina Zone of the Appalachian belt and present a new model for middle Palaeozoic interactions of the Appalachian periGondwanan realm with Laurentia.…”

“…The model was quickly tested in other orogens (e.g. Bradshaw et al 1981;Williams & Hatcher 1982;Ziegler 1982;Pigram & Davies 1987) and large numbers of 'suspect' terranes were identified in most. In the case of the lower Palaeozoic Caledonian-Appalachian orogen in Scandinavia, the British Isles and eastern USA and Canada, terranes were sandwiched between continents on opposing sides of the closing Iapetus Ocean (Williams & Hatcher 1982;Hutton 1987;Pickering et al 1988;Rankin et al 1988;Hibbard 2000;Roberts 2003).…”

Does the Meguma Terrane Extend into SW England?

“…A notable exception to this pattern of correlation is the Meguma terrane of southern Nova Scotia, the most outboard of the peri-Gondwanan terranes (Ganderia, Avalonia and Meguma) in the northern Appalachian orogen (Williams and Hatcher 1982) (Fig. 1).…”

The Place and Power of Myth in Geoscience: An Associate Editor's Perspective

“…Explicit recognition of suspect terranes can be helpful in dissecting the accretionary anatomy of orogenic belts (Williams and Hatcher, 1982;Monger, 1993), although a widespread tendency to regard all terranes designated suspect as necessarily exotic to the adjacent craton is a questionable approach (Hudson, 1987).…”