Does anyone have a scientific idea as to how the Rocky Mountains chain formed?
From Wikipedia article on ‘Rocky Mountains’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_mountains The younger ranges of the Rocky Mountains uplifted during the late Cretaceous period (100 million – 65 million years ago), although some portions of the southern mountains date from uplifts during the Precambrian (3,980 million – 600 million years ago). The mountains’ geology is a complex of igneous and metamorphic rock; younger sedimentary rock occurs along the margins of the southern Rocky Mountains, and volcanic rock from the Tertiary (65 million – 1.8 million years ago) occurs in the San Juan Mountains and in other areas. Millennia of severe erosion in the Wyoming Basin transformed intermountain basins into a relatively flat terrain.