Many major mountain systems of the world are in part the result of large scale compression of the crust in what are termed, fold-and-thrust belts. The style of formation of such belts is controversial. One school of thought reckons that they form in a manner similar to deforming snow ahead of a plow ("critical taper model"), whereas the other advocates formation by the compression of a beam. This project proposes an experiement to test these two hypotheses using field relations in the Pyrenees Mountains of Spain. This will be an important experiment because the method of geometric reconstruction commonly used to model deformed terranes, especially hydrocarbon-bearing reservoirs, depend in large part on the assumption of deformational style.
