question: When was the mountain building period, that ended 440 million years ago and affected most of modern-day New England, first described?
answer: described it in the 1950s
context: Title: Acadian orogeny
  Passage: The Acadian orogeny is a long-lasting mountain building event which began in the Middle Devonian, reaching a climax in the early Late Devonian.  It was active for approximately 50 million years, beginning roughly around 375 million years ago, with deformational, plutonic, and metamorphic events extending into the Early Mississippian.  The Acadian orogeny is the third of the four orogenies that created the Appalachian orogen and subsequent basin.  The preceding orogenies consisted of the Potomac and Taconic orogeny, which followed a rift/drift stage in the Late Neoproterozoic.  The Acadian orogeny involved the collision of a series of Avalonian continental fragments with the Laurasian continent.  Geographically, the Acadian orogen extended from the Canadian Maritime provinces migrating in a southwesterly direction toward Alabama.  However, the Northern Appalachian region, from New England northeastward into Gaspé region of Canada, was the most greatly affected region by the collision.
  Title: Geological history of oxygen
  Passage: Before photosynthesis evolved, Earth's atmosphere had no free oxygen (O).  Photosynthetic prokaryotic organisms that produced O as a waste product lived long before the first build-up of free oxygen in the atmosphere, perhaps as early as 3.5 billion years ago.  The oxygen they produced would have been rapidly removed from the atmosphere by weathering of reducing minerals, most notably iron.  This "mass rusting" led to the deposition of iron oxide on the ocean floor, forming banded iron formations.  Oxygen only began to persist in the atmosphere in small quantities about 50 million years before the start of the Great Oxygenation Event.  This mass oxygenation of the atmosphere resulted in rapid buildup of free oxygen.  At current rates of primary production, today's concentration of oxygen could be produced by photosynthetic organisms in 2,000 years.  In the absence of plants, the rate of oxygen production by photosynthesis was slower in the Precambrian, and the concentrations of O attained were less than 10% of today's and probably fluctuated greatly; oxygen may even have disappeared from the atmosphere again around 1.9 billion years ago.  These fluctuations in oxygen concentration had little direct effect on life, with mass extinctions not observed until the appearance of complex life around the start of the Cambrian period,   million years ago .  The presence of O2 provided life with new opportunities.  Aerobic metabolism is more efficient than anaerobic pathways, and the presence of oxygen undoubtedly created new possibilities for life to explore.  Since the start of the Cambrian period, atmospheric oxygen concentrations have fluctuated between 15% and 35% of atmospheric volume.  The maximum of 35% was reached towards the end of the Carboniferous period (about 300 million years ago), a peak which may have contributed to the large size of insects and amphibians at that time.  Whilst human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, affect relative carbon dioxide concentrations, their effect on the much larger concentration of oxygen is less significant.
  Title: Cameron's Line
  Passage: Cameron's Line is an Ordovician suture fault in the northeast United States which formed as part of the continental collision known as the Taconic orogeny around 450 mya.  Named after Eugene N. Cameron, who first described it in the 1950s, it ties together the North American continental craton, the prehistoric Taconic Island volcanic arc, and the bottom of the ancient Iapetus Ocean.
  Title: Laramide orogeny
  Passage: The Laramide orogeny was a period of mountain building in western North America, which started in the Late Cretaceous, 70 to 80 million years ago, and ended 35 to 55 million years ago.  The exact duration and ages of beginning and end of the orogeny are in dispute.  The Laramide orogeny occurred in a series of pulses, with quiescent phases intervening.  The major feature that was created by this orogeny was deep-seated, thick-skinned deformation, with evidence of this orogeny found from Canada to northern Mexico, with the easternmost extent of the mountain-building represented by the Black Hills of South Dakota.  The phenomenon is named for the Laramie Mountains of eastern Wyoming.  The Laramide orogeny is sometimes confused with the Sevier orogeny, which partially overlapped in time and space.
  Title: Dinosaur
  Passage: Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria that first appeared during the Triassic period.  Although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is the subject of active research, the current scientific consensus places their origin between 231 and 243 million years ago.  They became the dominant terrestrial vertebrates after the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event 201 million years ago.  Their dominance continued through the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods and ended when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of most dinosaur groups 66 million years ago.
  Title: Evolution of insects
  Passage: The most recent understanding of the evolution of insects is based on studies of the following branches of science: molecular biology, insect morphology, paleontology, insect taxonomy, evolution, embryology, bioinformatics and scientific computing.  It is estimated that the class of insects originated on Earth about 480 million years ago, in the Ordovician, at about the same time terrestrial plants appeared.  Insects evolved from a group of crustaceans.  The first insects were land bound, but about 400 million years ago in the Devonian period one lineage of insects evolved flight, the first animals to do so.  The oldest definitive insect fossil, "Rhyniognatha hirsti", is estimated to be  396 .  Global climate conditions changed several times during the history of Earth, and along with it the diversity of insects.  The Pterygotes (winged insects) underwent a major radiation in the Carboniferous (356 to 299 million years ago) while the Endopterygota (insects that go through different life stages with metamorphosis) underwent another major radiation in the Permian (299 to 252 million years ago).
  Title: Taconic orogeny
  Passage: The Taconic orogeny was a mountain building period that ended 440 million years ago and affected most of modern-day New England.  A great mountain chain formed from eastern Canada down through what is now the Piedmont off the East coast of the United States.  As the mountain chain eroded in the Silurian and Devonian periods, sediments from the mountain chain spread throughout the present-day Appalachians and midcontinental North America.
  Title: Cobequid fault
  Passage: The Cobequid Fault is a fault that is the extension of the Chedabucto Fault.  This fault runs from Truro to Cape Chignecto south of the Cobequid Hills.  Both the Cobequid fault and the Chedabucto Fault form the Minas Fault zone splitting Nova Scotia into the Avalon Zone and the Meguma Zone.  Movement on the Cobequid Fault started before 400 million years ago and end around 40 million years ago.  Between that time around 350 million years violent volcanic eruptions at Spicers Cove north Cape Chignecto Provincial Park and 50 million years after grey sandstone rich in fossil plants were deposited.  At Five Islands Provincial Park there are red rocks formed by the large accumulation of mud, sand and gravel around 210 million years ago.
  Title: Quaternary
  Passage: Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS).  It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present.  The Quaternary Period is divided into two epochs: the Pleistocene (2.588 million years ago to 11.7 thousand years ago) and the Holocene (11.7 thousand years ago to today).  The informal term "Late Quaternary" refers to the past 0.5–1.0 million years.
citations: Cameron's Line Taconic orogeny