ABSTRACT
Over the past several decades the notion that most of the world’s great thrust belts have been caused by gravity-induced spreading of great linear orogenic welts has been strongly communicated by many prominent geologists such as Van Bemmelen, Bucher, Beloussov and Carey. The majority, however, have been intuitively skeptical but uncharacteristically silent. The substantial researches of the vertebrate paleontologists and geomorphologists are especially relevant to the subject, but their messages have not been widely circulated and hence have had little impact.
Examples from western North America and the Alps illustrate the tremendous late Cenozoic orogenic and epeirogenic uplifts. The central Appalachians exhibit great uplift since the Jurassic. All suggest that such uplifts are more characteristic of the post-thrusting phase than of the pre-thrusting, and particularly that the idea of gravity-induced thrusting has been, but must not be, predicated on the present attitude of the fault planes or present physiography.
