The Westerwald is a low mountain range on the right bank of the river Rhine in the German federal states of Rhineland-Palatinate, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia. It is a part of the Rhenish Massif. Its highest elevation, at 657 m above sea level, is the Fuchskaute in the High Westerwald.
The Sauerland is a rural, hilly area spreading across most of the south-eastern part of North Rhine-Westphalia, in parts heavily forested and, apart from the major valleys, sparsely inhabited.
The Eifel is a low mountain range in western Germany, eastern Belgium and northern Luxembourg. It occupies parts of southwestern North Rhine-Westphalia, northwestern Rhineland-Palatinate and the southern area of the German-speaking Community of Belgium.
The Taunus is a mountain range in Hesse, Germany, located north west of Frankfurt and north of Wiesbaden. The tallest peak in the range is Großer Feldberg at 878 m; other notable peaks are Kleiner Feldberg and Altkönig.
The Siegerland is a region of Germany covering the old district of Siegen and the upper part of the district of Altenkirchen, belonging to the Rhineland-Palatinate adjoining it to the west.
The Caledonian orogeny was a mountain-building cycle recorded in the northern parts of the British Isles, the Scandinavian Caledonides, Svalbard, eastern Greenland and parts of north-central Europe. The Caledonian orogeny encompasses events that occurred from the Ordovician to Early Devonian, roughly 490–390 million years ago (Ma). It was caused by the closure of the Iapetus Ocean when the Laurentia and Baltica continents and the Avalonia microcontinent collided.
The Variscan orogeny, or Hercynian orogeny, was a geologic mountain-building event caused by Late Paleozoic continental collision between Euramerica (Laurussia) and Gondwana to form the supercontinent of Pangaea.
The Hunsrück Slate is a Lower Devonian lithostratigraphic unit, a type of rock strata, in the German regions of the Hunsrück and Taunus. It is a lagerstätte famous for exceptional preservation of a highly diverse fossil fauna assemblage.
The Klerf Formation is an Early Devonian (Emsian) formation that includes a Lagerstätte in the Northern Eifel hills, at Willwerath near Prüm, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. In it Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, a giant eurypterid was discovered. The Klerf Formation, comprising greenish and reddish shales, siltstones and sandstones, was first described in 1919 by Rudolf Richter (1881-1957) and reaches a maximum thickness of about 1,300 metres (4,300 ft). It is part of Alken quarry along with Nellenköpfchen Formation.
The Cologne Lowland, also called the Cologne Bay or, less commonly, the Cologne Bight, is a densely populated area of Germany lying between the cities of Bonn, Aachen, and Düsseldorf/Neuss. It is situated in the southwest of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and forms the natural southern conclusion of the Lower Rhenish lowlands and the transition to the Rhenish Massif.
The Rhenohercynian Zone or Rheno-Hercynian zone in structural geology describes a fold belt of west and central Europe, formed during the Hercynian orogeny. The zone consists of folded and thrust Devonian and early Carboniferous sedimentary rocks that were deposited in a back-arc basin along the southern margin of the then existing paleocontinent Laurussia.
The Giessen nappe is a tectonic nappe in the southeastern part of the Rhenish Massif in western Germany. The nappe is an "alien" (allochthonous) unit in the Rhenohercynian zone of the Hercynian orogeny, it was thrust over the usual slightly metamorphosed Devonian and Carboniferous sedimentary rocks in this zone.
The Saxothuringian Zone, Saxo-Thuringian zone or Saxothuringicum is in geology a structural or tectonic zone in the Hercynian or Variscan orogen of central and western Europe. Because rocks of Hercynian age are in most places covered by younger strata, the zone is not everywhere visible at the surface. Places where it crops out are the northern Bohemian Massif, the Spessart, the Odenwald, the northern parts of the Black Forest and Vosges and the southern part of the Taunus. West of the Vosges terranes on both sides of the English Channel are also seen as part of the zone, for example the Lizard complex in Cornwall or the Léon Zone of the Armorican Massif (Brittany).
The Stavelot Massif is a geological massif in the Belgian Ardenne. Most of the massif crops out in Belgium, but a small part lies across the border with Germany.
Cupressocrinitidae is an extinct family of crinoid from the Middle to Late Devonian. Cupressocrinites is a representative of this family.
The region of Middle Hesse is one of three planning regions in the German state of Hesse, alongside North and South Hesse. Its territory is identical with that of the administrative province of Gießen and covers the counties of Limburg-Weilburg, Lahn-Dill-Kreis, Gießen, Marburg-Biedenkopf and Vogelsbergkreis. The Middle Hesse Regional Assembly, which decides on the regional plan, currently consists of 31 members chosen by the five counties and the three towns with special status: Gießen, Marburg and Wetzlar. The regional assembly has tasked the governing president (Regierungspräsident) with delivering regional management. The Mid-Hesse Regional Management Association was founded on 22 January 2003.
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.
A truncated upland, truncated highland or bevelled upland is the heavily eroded remains of a fold mountain range, often from an early period in earth history. The term Rumpfgebirge was first introduced into the literature in 1886 by Ferdinand von Richthofen. The rumps of the former mountain ranges may be found in many lowland regions of the Earth's crust and especially outcrop in Central Europe through more recent tectonics. This could result in an uplifted peneplain which is one type of truncated upland.
The main ridge of the Taunus is a 75-kilometre-long ridgeline in the High Taunus mountain in Germany, whose geological core consists of veins of hard Taunus quartzite. The ridge separates the steeply descending Anterior Taunus to the south from the more gradually descending upland of the Hintertaunus or Farther Taunus in the north. The watershed between the Upper Rhine and River Main to the south and the Middle Rhine tributaries of the Wisper and Lahn to the north, runs for long sections along the main ridge. Several of the rivers flowing southwards have broken through the rock of the Taunus ridge unit in several places so the watershed is diverted a few kilometres to the north.
