A description and interpretation of the formerly unknown Cretaceous thrust belt in previously folded Proterozoic strata.

With its thickness of more than 15 km of strata, covering some 200,000 km2, the Belt basin displays one of the planet's largest, best-exposed, most accessible, and best-preserved sequences of Mesoproterozoic sedimentary and igneous rocks. This volume focuses on research into this world-class province; kindles ideas about this critical era of Earth evolution; and covers aspects of the basin from its paleontology, mineralogy, sedimentology, and stratigraphy to its magmatism, ore deposits, geophysics, and structural geology.

"Detailed recounting of the first government-sponsored geological survey of the Wyoming and adjacent territories in 1868. The results of Hayden's survey provided the earliest descriptive stratigraphic-structural profile across the Rocky Mountains and the initial discovery of dinosaur tracks in western North America"--