More mountain building and deep erosion
Many features of the present-day landscape of Yellowstone stem from Pliocene time, about 10 million years ago. At that time the entire region—in fact, much of the Rocky Mountain chain—was being uplifted by giant earth movements to heights several thousand feet above its previous level. This episode of regional uplift accounts in large measure for the present high average elevation of the Yellowstone country. Although the precise cause of the uplift is unknown, the uplift assuredly reflects profound changes that were taking place deep within or beneath the earth’s crust.
Great tensional forces, operating during Pliocene time, pulled the Yellowstone region apart and partially broke it into large steep-sided blocks bounded by normal faults ([fig. 13]). Some blocks sank while others rose, commonly on the order of several thousand feet. The Gallatin Range, in the northwest corner of the Park, for example, was lifted as a rectangular mountain block along north-trending 20-mile-long normal faults that border it on each side ([fig. 14], section A-A′; [pl. 1]). In the south-central part of the Park, the differential movements between several adjacent fault blocks totaled more than 15,000 feet ([fig. 14], section C-C′). Farther south, the Teton Range moved up and the floor of Jackson Hole moved down along a normal-fault zone that stretches along the east foot of the range. An enormous offset of about 30,000 feet developed between the two crustal blocks, accounting in large part for the now incredibly steep and rugged east face of the Teton Range.
The pronounced rise in elevation of the general ground surface and the chopping of the region into many mountainous fault blocks caused a profound increase in the rate of erosion. Once-sluggish streams turned into vigorous, fast-moving rivers that began to cut deeply into the Absaroka volcanic plateau. Huge quantities of rock debris were stripped off and carried out of the area, and at the end of the Pliocene, the Yellowstone region must have been very highly dissected mountains and table- and canyon-lands. Much of the landscape may have resembled the rugged terrain now seen in the Absaroka Range along the east side of the Park. These mountains ([fig. 27]), and the Washburn Range in the interior of the Park ([fig. 4]), today represent but small remnants of the vast pile of Absaroka volcanic rocks that once covered all of Yellowstone and the surrounding regions.
