The Alps form part of a Cenozoic orogenic belt of mountain chains, called the Alpide belt, that stretches through southern Europe and Asia from the Atlantic all the way to the Himalayas. This belt of mountain chains was formed during the Alpine orogeny. A gap in these mountain chains in central Europe separates the Alps from the Carpathians to the east. Orogeny took place continuously and tectonic subsidence has produced the gaps in between.
The Central Eastern Alps, also referred to as Austrian Central Alps or just Central Alps, comprise the main chain of the Eastern Alps in Austria and the adjacent regions of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy and Slovenia. South them is the Southern Limestone Alps.
In geology, a nappe or thrust sheet is a large sheetlike body of rock that has been moved more than 2 km (1.2 mi) or 5 km (3.1 mi) above a thrust fault from its original position. Nappes form in compressional tectonic settings like continental collision zones or on the overriding plate in active subduction zones. Nappes form when a mass of rock is forced over another rock mass, typically on a low angle fault plane. The resulting structure may include large-scale recumbent folds, shearing along the fault plane, imbricate thrust stacks, fensters and klippes.
The Penninic nappes or the Penninicum, commonly abbreviated as Penninic, are one of three nappe stacks and geological zones in which the Alps can be divided. In the western Alps the Penninic nappes are more obviously present than in the eastern Alps, where they crop out as a narrow band. The name Penninic is derived from the Pennine Alps, an area in which rocks from the Penninic nappes are abundant.
The Austroalpine nappes are a geological nappe stack in the European Alps. The Alps contain three such stacks, of which the Austroalpine nappes are structurally on top of the other two. The name Austroalpine means Southern Alpine, because these nappes crop out mainly in the Eastern Alps.
The Southern Alps are a geological subdivision of Alps that are found south of the Periadriatic Seam, a major geological faultzone across the Alps. The southern Alps contain almost the same area as the Southern Limestone Alps. The rocks of the southern Alps gradually go over in the Dinarides or Dinaric Alps to the south-east. In the south-west they disappear below recent sediments of the Po basin that are lying discordant on top of them.
The Aarmassif or Aaremassif is a geologic massif in the Swiss Alps. It contains a number of large mountain chains and parts of mountain chains.
The Hohe Tauern window is a geological structure in the Austrian Central Eastern Alps. It is a window in the Austroalpine nappes where high-grade metamorphic rocks of the underlying Penninic nappes crop out. The structure is caused by a large dome-like antiform in the nappe stacks of the Alps.
The Sesia unit or Sesia nappe, also called the Sesia-Dent Blanche unit is a tectonic unit or terrane in the Swiss and Italian Alps. The zone crops out in the Pennine Alps and in the southeastern part of the Aosta Valley. It is widely seen as part of the Austroalpine nappes and correlated with the Dent Blanche nappe that crops out further to the northwest.
The Valais Ocean is a subducted oceanic basin which was situated between the continent Europe and the microcontinent Iberia or so called Briançonnais microcontinent. Remnants of the Valais ocean are found in the western Alps and in tectonic windows of the eastern Alps and are mapped as the so-called "north Penninic" nappes.
The greywacke zone is a band of Paleozoic metamorphosed sedimentary rocks that forms an east-west band through the Austrian Alps.
The Molasse basin is a foreland basin north of the Alps which formed during the Oligocene and Miocene epochs. The basin formed as a result of the flexure of the European plate under the weight of the orogenic wedge of the Alps that was forming to the south.
The Pieniny Klippen Belt is in geology a tectonically and orographically remarkable zone in the Western Carpathians, with a very complex geological structure. It is a narrow and extremely long north banded zone of extreme shortening and sub-vertical strike-slip fault zone, with complex geological history, where only fragments of individual strata and facies are preserved. The Pieniny Klippen Belt is considered one of the main tectonic sutures of the Carpathians and forms the boundary between the Outer and Central Western Carpathians.
The Zermatt-Saas zone is a tectonic unit in the western part of the Alps. Its lithology is mainly ophiolite but there are some pelitic zones too.
The Western Carpathians are an arc-shaped mountain range, the northern branch of the Alpine-Himalayan fold and thrust system called the Alpide belt, which evolved during the Alpine orogeny. In particular, their pre-Cenozoic evolution is very similar to that of the Eastern Alps, and they constitute a transition between the Eastern Alps and the Eastern Carpathians.
An external massif is, in the geology of the Alps, a place where crystalline rocks of the European plate crop out. Such massifs are found north and west of the Penninic zone as tectonic windows in the Helvetic Zone. They differ from the crystalline nappes in that they were originally part of the European plate, while the Penninic nappes were part of the crust below various domains in the Tethys Ocean.
The Engadin window or is a tectonic window that exposes penninic units lying below the austroalpine units in the alpine nappe stack. It has a roughly elliptical shape with the long axis striking northwest-southeast and dimensions of 55 x 17 km.
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 Engadine Line is an over 50 kilometres (30 mi) long strike-slip fault in the Swiss canton of Graubünden, which extends into Italy and Austria. It runs along the Engadine Valley and the Bregaglia Valley and offsets Austroalpine and Penninic units in a sinistral direction. The western end of the fault appears to peter out into ductile deformation in the Bregaglia Valley or continues as the Gruf Line to the southwest; the eastern end is buried by the Ötztal tectonic block and may continue as the "Inntal fault", "Isar fault" or "Loisach fault".
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