Geology of Europe

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Surficial geology of Europe Europe geological map-en.jpg
Surficial geology of Europe

The geology of Europe is varied and complex, and gives rise to the wide variety of landscapes found across the continent, from the Scottish Highlands to the rolling plains of Hungary. Europe's most significant feature is the dichotomy between highland and mountainous Southern Europe and a vast, partially underwater, northern plain ranging from England in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. These two halves are separated by the Pyrenees and the Alps-Carpathians mountain chain. The northern plains are delimited in the west by the Scandinavian Mountains and the mountainous parts of the British Isles. The southern mountainous region is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea. Major shallow water bodies submerging parts of the northern plains are the Celtic Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Barents Sea.

Contents

From the standpoint of plate tectonics, the ongoing northward drive of the African Plate into the Eurasian Plate in the Mediterranean basin is the most prominent aspect of the European scene today. The pressure exerted by the African plate is the overall cause of the rise of the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Carpathian Mountains. Limestones and other sediments, the ancient floor of the Tethys Sea, are pushed high and now make up much of these ranges. A submarine back-arc basin develops south of Italy, which is one of several Mediterranean mini-continental fragments caught between the two plates. This buckling of the Earth's crust forces up Italy's mountains and stimulates active faults and volcanoes such as Mount Etna. Iberia, another separate terrain unit, has been rotated and emplaced against the rest of Europe by the plate collision.

Moving north from the Alps and other ranges, tectonic activity largely fades away in the stable Baltic craton. One exception to this trend is a hot spot, rising from the mantle underneath central Germany, which has been responsible in geologic time for volcanoes such as the Vogelsberg in Hesse and currently provides heat to hot springs and lakes in the region.

Weathering mantles made up of saprolite are common in Europe. Saprolite composition varies from kaolinitic and ferrallitic to grus. The first were formed in the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic while the latter in the late Cenozoic. [1] Stripping of weathered rock has produced depressions occupied by numerous lakes in Finland and Sweden. [2] [3]

Components

Europe consists of the following cratons and terranes and microcontinents:

Geological history

Map of "Europe" in the early Oligocene, some 30 million years ago. Mediterranean Rupelian.jpg
Map of "Europe" in the early Oligocene, some 30 million years ago.
The formation of Europe as a coherent landmass dates to after the breakup of Pangaea, taking place during the Oligocene and completed by the early Neogene period, some 20 million years ago.

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tethys Ocean</span> Prehistoric ocean between Gondwana and Laurasia

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baltic Shield</span> Ancient segment of Earths crust

The Baltic Shield is a segment of the Earth's crust belonging to the East European Craton, representing a large part of Fennoscandia, northwestern Russia and the northern Baltic Sea. It is composed mostly of Archean and Proterozoic gneisses and greenstone which have undergone numerous deformations through tectonic activity. It contains the oldest rocks of the European continent with a thickness of 250–300 km.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geography of Europe</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paleo-Tethys Ocean</span> Ocean on the margin of Gondwana between the Middle Cambrian and Late Triassic

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Western Carpathians</span> Mountain range along the border between Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geology of Turkey</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cimmeria (continent)</span> Ancient string of microcontinents that rifted from Gondwana

Cimmeria was an ancient continent, or, rather, a string of microcontinents or terranes, that rifted from Gondwana in the Southern Hemisphere and was accreted to Eurasia in the Northern Hemisphere. It consisted of parts of present-day Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet, China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Malaysia. Cimmeria rifted from the Gondwanan shores of the Paleo-Tethys Ocean during the Early Permian and as the Neo-Tethys Ocean opened behind it, during the Permian, the Paleo-Tethys closed in front of it. Because the different chunks of Cimmeria drifted northward at different rates, a Meso-Tethys Ocean formed between the different fragments during the Cisuralian. Cimmeria rifted off Gondwana from east to west, from Australia to the eastern Mediterranean. It stretched across several latitudes and spanned a wide range of climatic zones.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geological history of Earth</span> The sequence of major geological events in Earths past

The geological history of the Earth follows the major geological events in Earth's past based on the geological time scale, a system of chronological measurement based on the study of the planet's rock layers (stratigraphy). Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago by accretion from the solar nebula, a disk-shaped mass of dust and gas left over from the formation of the Sun, which also created the rest of the Solar System.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Aegean Volcanic Arc</span> Chain of volcanic islands in the South Aegean Sea

The South Aegean Volcanic Arc is a volcanic arc in the South Aegean Sea formed by plate tectonics. The prior cause was the subduction of the African Plate beneath the Eurasian Plate, raising the Aegean arc across what is now the North Aegean Sea. It was not yet the sea, nor an arc, or at least not the one it is today, nor was there a chain of volcanoes. In the Holocene, the process of back-arc extension began, probably stimulated by pressure from the Arabian Plate compressing the region behind the arc. The extension deformed the region into its current configuration. First, the arc moved to the south and assumed its arcuate configuration. Second, the Aegean Sea opened behind the arc because the crust was thinned and weakened there. Third, magma broke through the thinned crust to form a second arc composed of a volcanic chain. And finally, the Aegean Sea Plate broke away from Eurasia in the new fault zone to the north.

This is a list of articles related to plate tectonics and tectonic plates.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iberian Plate</span> Small tectonic plate now part of the Eurasian plate

The Iberian Plate is a microplate typically grouped with the Eurasian Plate that includes the microcontinent Iberia, Corsica, Sardinia, the Balearic Islands, the Briançonnais zone of the Penninic nappes of the Alps, and the portion of Morocco north of the High Atlas Mountains. The Iberian plate is a part of the Eurasian plate.

The geology of the Baltic Sea is characterized by having areas located both at the Baltic Shield of the East European Craton and in the Danish-North German-Polish Caledonides. Historical geologists make a distinction between the current Baltic Sea depression, formed in the Cenozoic era, and the much older sedimentary basins whose sediments are preserved in the zone. Although glacial erosion has contributed to shape the present depression, the Baltic trough is largely a depression of tectonic origin that existed long before the Quaternary glaciation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geology of Germany</span>

The geology of Germany is heavily influenced by several phases of orogeny in the Paleozoic and the Cenozoic, by sedimentation in shelf seas and epicontinental seas and on plains in the Permian and Mesozoic as well as by the Quaternary glaciations.

The geology of Austria consists of Precambrian rocks and minerals together with younger marine sedimentary rocks uplifted by the Alpine orogeny.

The Hellenic orogeny is a collective noun referring to multiple mountain building events that shaped the topography of the southern margin of Eurasia into what is now Greece, the Aegean Sea and western Turkey, beginning in the Jurassic. Prior to then the supercontinent, Pangaea, had divided along a divergent boundary into two continents, Gondwana land and Laurasia, separated by a primordial ocean, Paleo-Tethys Ocean. As the two continents continued to break up, Gondwana, pushed by divergent boundaries developing elsewhere, began to drift to the north, closing the sea. As it went it split off a number of smaller land masses, terranes, which preceded it to the north. The Hellenic orogeny is the story of the collision first of these terranes and then of Gondwana, reduced to Africa, with Eurasia, and the closing of Tethys to the Mediterranean. The process has been ongoing since the Jurassic and continues today.

References

  1. Migoń, Piotr; Lidmar-Bergström, Karna (2002). "Deep weathering through time in central and northwestern Europe: problems of dating and interpretation of geological record". Catena. 49: 25–40.
  2. Lidmar-Bergström, K.; Olsson, S.; Roaldset, E. (1999). "Relief features and palaeoweathering remnants in formerly glaciated Scandinavian basement areas". In Thiry, Médard; Simon-Coinçon, Régine (eds.). Palaeoweathering, Palaeosurfaces and Related Continental Deposits. Special publication of the International Association of Sedimentologists. Vol. 27. Blackwell Science Ltd. pp. 275–301. ISBN   0-632 -05311-9.
  3. Lindberg, Johan (April 4, 2016). "berggrund och ytformer". Uppslagsverket Finland (in Swedish). Retrieved November 30, 2017.