GSA publishes Hildebrand's "Mesozoic Assembly of the North American Cordillera"

Tucson-based geologist Robert Hildebrand's new Geological Society of America's Special Paper,  "Mesozoic Assembly of the North American Cordillera," is now available from the GSA bookstore.

Expect it to offer a controversial reinterpretation of Cordilleran tectonics.

Bob's previous GSA Special Paper 457, "Did Westward Subduction Cause Cretaceous–Tertiary Orogeny in the North American Cordillera?," was described as an "iconoclastic model for the Cretaceous–Tertiary development of the Cordilleran orogen."  It's become GSA's best-selling Special Paper ever.   

GSA describes the new volume, "In this well-illustrated book, Hildebrand builds upon his model for the Mesozoic collision of the exotic Rubian ribbon continent with the western margin of North America presented in GSA Special Paper 457. Starting with an overview of Cordilleran exotic and suspect terranes, he goes on to integrate the disparate fragments into a dynamic model involving arc magmatism, arc-continent collision, slab failure magmatism, and meridional migration. While the main focus is on the offshore assembly of the Rubian ribbon continent, Hildebrand explores its interactions with North America during the Sevier and Laramide events and concludes that North America was the lower plate in both. The volume will be of great interest to the general geological community, including advanced students, as it presents new ideas on the Mesozoic assembly of California and provides the first overview of the North American Cordillera since GSA’s Decade of North American Geology volumes 20+ years ago."

The new paper is 169 pages with 65 color figures including a big fold-out map of North American Cordilleran terranes in a back pocket.