Abstract
The sedimentary cover of the North American craton preserved little evidence of the Paleozoic tectonic events that shaped the Appalachian orogen on its eastern side. A notable exception is the NNW-trending Hudson Bay central high, which corresponds to a normal-fault array extending for a minimum length of 500 km. A working hypothesis is proposed in which stresses applied to the continental margin during the Silurian–earliest Devonian Salinian orogeny were transmitted over a distance of >1400 km in the continental interior, where they induced the normal-fault reactivation of older structural discontinuities. The shutdown of tectonic activity along the Hudson Bay central high during the latest Early Devonian to earliest Middle Devonian is interpreted as resulting from a change in the direction of plate convergence during the Acadian orogeny.