The Coyote Mountains lies within a complex tectonic region. The Salton Trough itself is a pull-apart basin that is the result of crustal stretching and sinking by the combined actions of the San Andreas Fault and the East Pacific Rise. Tectonism related to the North America - Pacific plate boundary is primarily manifested by the San Andreas Fault, the Elsinore Fault Zone, the Imperial Fault Zone, and the San Jacinto Fault Zone, as well as a complex system of interconnecting faults. These major right lateral strike-slip faults have transformed the region in geologically recent times. Within the last ≈1.2 million years, the Elsinore Fault Zone and its associated subordinate faults are responsible for rapidly uplifting metamorphic basement rocks and overlying volcanic and sedimentary rocks of the Coyote Mountains, revealing the complex stratigraphic record of their tectonic, climatic, and paleontological evolution. Marine fossils and sedimentary deposits that once formed in a shallow sea (ancestral Gulf of California) now sit at an elevation of over 2000 feet above sea level.