Orogenic

Orogenic cycle

Long before the acceptance of plate tectonics, geologists had found evidence within many orogens of repeated cycles of deposition, deformation, crustal thickening and mountain building, and crustal thinning to form new depositional basins. These were named orogenic cycles, and various theories were proposed to explain them. Canadian geologist Tuzo Wilson first put forward a plate tectonic interpretation of orogenic cycles, now known as Wilson cycles. Wilson proposed that orogenic cycles represented the periodic opening and closing of an ocean basin, with each stage of the process leaving its characteristic record on the rocks of the orogen.