A BILLION YEARS AGO 1 Billion Years Ago

A BILLION YEARS AGO 1 Billion Years Ago Excessive heat underneath the crust of the earth has caused the continental crust to split. This is caused by magma that has built up and pushed its way upward, cracking the crust and slowly pushing it apart forming two continental crusts. These crusts drift apart and the Iaeputus Ocean is formed between the two. One of the continental crusts is actually the North American Craton. At this point the Iaeputus Ocean is a very shallow sea. Today the Champlain Valley consists of of the Adirondacks, Green Mountains and Lake Champlain. Vermont and its surrounding evolved from a small shallow sea juxtaposing the North American Craton to the present day Champlain Sea separating Vermont from New York. A BILLION YEARS AGO there was nothing but the North American Craton and a shallow sea in the Champlain Valley. A volcano formed due to subduction of the oceanic crust, Heat built up and pushed its way upward until it rifted the earth’s surface and slowly separated the continental crust, forming the Iaeputus Ocean. The North American Craton continued to shed sediments into the Iaeputus Ocean, forming layers of sandstone and limestone. Then the Iaeputus Ocean closed, forming thrust faults that are exposed in the Champlain Valley today. These faults pushed older, deeper rocks on top of younger rocks. These faults collectively formed the Green Mountains during a mountain building event called the Taconic Orogeny which occurred four hundred to five hundred years ago. 450 Million Years Ago Subduction switches and pushes piles of shale onto the side of the magnetic arch. The older rocks have settled underneath a layer of younger rocks in the Iaeputus Ocean. Shale are the flat rocks that settle at the edge of the water and are very good for skipping across the water as you might have already discovered. 400 Million Years Ago The accetionary prism has molded into the Green Mountains. Lake Champlain has formed, it has split the accetionary prism so that to this day you can find the same sediments on either side of the lake. Lake Champlain formed on a section that was made up of very deformed and softer rocks, such as shale, dolostone, and limestone. Which made it easy for the scraping and deepening of the lake.