Introduction

Overview of the
Humber River

Global and Continental Glaciation

Land Form Development in North America

Geological History
of the Great Lakes

Development of the
Oak Ridges Moraine

Geology of the
Humber River Watershed

Ecology

Early Inhabitants

Maps of the
Humber River Watershed

Photo Gallery Humber River Watershed

Overview of Geological Origins of the Humber River

Part VI - Tectonic Activity

The stratigraphic orientation of the Paleozoic sedimentary deposits of Southern Ontario are the heritage of prior geological continent building events.

A tectonic plate event, or collision, known as the Taconic Orogeny (Figure 5), buckled the crust beneath the study area, creating basins and arches with thick sedimentary packages accumulating within interior seas in the Michigan and Appalachian basins on either side of the Findlay-Algonquin Arch.




The Ordovician limestone and shale lie unconformably upon Precambrian shield rocks 1.45 to 1.1 billion years old that are at least 70 km thick and dip gently to the west. As a result of this activity the bedrock Paleozoic sediments including those of Ordivician age have a dip to the west as shown in Figure 6.