The Cordillera of western North America occupies the central 5000 km of the circum-Pacific orogenic belt, which extends for 25,000 km along a great-circle path from Taiwan to the Antarctic Peninsula. The North American Cordillera is anomalous because dextral transform faults along its western flank have supplanted subduction zones, the hallmark of circum-Pacific tectonism, along much of the Cordilleran continental margin since mid-Cenozoic time. The linear continuity of the Cordilleran orogen terminates on the north in the Arctic region and on the south in the Mesoamerican region at sinistral transform faults of Mesozoic and Cenozoic age, respectively. The Cordilleran margin of Laurentia was formed initially by rift breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia followed by development of the Neoproterozoic to early Paleozoic Cordilleran miogeocline along a passive continental margin, but it was modified in California and Mexico by Permian to Triassic transform truncation of Paleozoic tectonic trends. Late Paleozoic and Mesozoic accretion of oceanic island arcs and subduction complexes expanded the width of the Cordilleran orogen both before and after Triassic initiation of ancestral circum-Pacific subduction beneath the Cordilleran margin. Mesozoic to Cenozoic extensions and counterparts of Cordilleran accreted terranes extend southward into the Caribbean Antilles and northern South America. The development of successive forearc and retroforeland basins accompanied the progress of Cordilleran orogenesis over time, and coeval Mesozoic to Cenozoic batholith belts reflect continuing plate consumption at subduction zones along the continental margin. The assembly of subduction complexes along the Cordilleran continental margin continued into Cenozoic time, but dextral strike slip along the Pacific flank of the Cordilleran orogen displaced elongate coastal segments of the orogen northward during Cenozoic time. In the United States and Mexico, Laramide breakup of the Cordilleran foreland during shallow slab subduction and crustal extension within the Basin and Range taphrogen also expanded the width of the Cordilleran orogen during Cenozoic time.

Plume tracks at the Earth's surface probably have various origins, such as wet spots, simple rifts, and shear heating. Because plate boundaries move relative to one another and relative to the mantle, plumes located on or close to them cannot be considered as reliable for establishing a reference frame. Using only relatively fixed intraplate Pacific hotspots, plate motions with respect to the mantle in two different reference frames, one fed from below the asthenosphere, and one fed by the asthenosphere itself, provide different kinematic results, stimulating opposite dynamic speculations. Plates move faster relative to the mantle if the source of hotspots is taken to be the middle-upper asthenosphere, because hotspot tracks would then not record the entire decoupling occurring in the low-velocity zone. A shallow intra-asthenospheric origin for hotspots would raise the Pacific deep-fed velocity from a value of 10 cm/year to a faster hypothetical velocity of ∼20 cm/year. In this setting, the net rotation of the lithosphere relative to the mesosphere would increase from a value of 0.4359°/m.y. (deep-fed hotspots) to 1.4901°/m.y. (shallow-fed hotspots). In this framework, all plates move westward along an undulated sinusoidal stream, and plate rotation poles are largely located in a restricted area at a mean latitude of 58°S. This reference frame seems more consistent with the persistent geological asymmetry that suggests a global tuning of plate motions related to Earth's rotation. Another significant result is that along east- or northeast-directed subduction zones, slabs move relative to the mantle in the direction opposed to the subduction, casting doubts on slab pull as the first-order driving mechanism of plate dynamics.