Cees Van Staal on the Origin of the Appalachians

In the podcast, Cees Van Staal tells us about the Paleozoic tectonic events that led to the formation of the Appalachians. The events are closely related to those involved in the Caledonian orogeny and the mountains it created in what is now Ireland, Scotland, east Greenland, and Norway, as discussed in the episode with Rob Strachan. However, the Appalachians that we see today are not the worn-down remnants of the Paleozoic mountains. Instead, they reflect much more a topography that was created during processes associated with rifting and magmatism that accompanied the opening of the Atlantic Ocean as well as the effects of the ice ages as recently as about 10,000 years ago. Van Staal has been studying the Appalachians for over 35 years, focusing especially on the large-scale tectonics of their formation. He is Emeritus scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada and an Adjunct/Research Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.

You can listen to Cees Van Staal on the Origin of the Appalachians online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Cees Van Staal on the Origin of the Appalachians is an episode from Geology Bites By Oliver Strimpel by Oliver Strimpel.

This episode is 00:25:07 long.

This episode was published on Aug 17, 2025.

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