The San Rafael orogeny was an

orogeny Orogeny is a mountain building process. An orogeny is an event that takes place at a convergent plate margin when plate motion compresses the margin. An ''orogenic belt'' or ''orogen'' develops as the compressed plate crumples and is uplifted t ...

that affected parts of western

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

and Chile during the

Late Paleozoic Late may refer to: * LATE, an acronym which could stand for: ** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia ** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law ** Local average treatment effect, ...

. The resulting orogenic belt has a NW-NNW curved form. The San Rafael orogeny might have been linked with the roughly contemporary

Gondwanide orogeny The Gondwanide orogeny was an orogeny active in the Permian that affected parts of Gondwana that are by current geography now located in southern South America, South Africa, Antarctica, Australia and New Guinea. The zone of deformation in Arge ...

of eastern Argentina. Parts of the

Choiyoi Group Choiyoi Group ( es, Grupo Choiyoi) is a Permian and Triassic-aged group of volcano-sedimentary formations in Argentina and Chile. The group bears evidence of bimodal-style volcanism related to an ancient subduction zone that existed along the w ...

sediments were deformed by the San Rafael orogeny. During the

Neogene The Neogene ( ), informally Upper Tertiary or Late Tertiary, is a geologic period and system that spans 20.45 million years from the end of the Paleogene Period million years ago ( Mya) to the beginning of the present Quaternary Period Mya. ...

ancient faults related to the San Rafael orogeny conditioned the geometry of the blocks affected by the

Andean orogeny The Andean orogeny ( es, Orogenia andina) is an ongoing process of orogeny that began in the Early Jurassic and is responsible for the rise of the Andes mountains. The orogeny is driven by a reactivation of a long-lived subduction system along ...

. Some of the

pluton In geology, an igneous intrusion (or intrusive body or simply intrusion) is a body of intrusive igneous rock that forms by crystallization of magma slowly cooling below the surface of the Earth. Intrusions have a wide variety of forms and com ...

s of the

Elqui-Limarí Batholith The Elqui-Limarí Batholith is a group of plutons in the Andes of Chile and Argentina between the latitudes of 28 and 30° S. The plutons of the batholith were Methods of pluton emplacement, emplaced and cooled in the Paleozoic, Late Paleozoic and t ...

were emplaced a context of

crustal thickening Thrust tectonics or contractional tectonics is concerned with the structures formed by, and the tectonic processes associated with, the shortening and thickening of the crust or lithosphere. It is one of the three main types of tectonic regime, ...

derivative of the San Rafael orogeny.

References

Orogenies of South America Geology of Mendoza Province Geology of Chile Paleozoic orogenies Permian orogenies Permian geology of South America {{orogeny-stub