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The Hercynian, or Variscan, orogenic belt evolved during the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, from about 419 to 299 million years ago. The belt extends from Portugal and western Spain, southwestern Ireland, and southwestern England in the west through the Ardennes, France (Brittany, Massif Central, Vosges, and Corsica), Sardinia, and Germany (Odenwald, Black Forest, and Harz Mountains) to the Czech Republic (Bohemian Massif). The orogeny was formed by plate-tectonic processes that included seafloor spreading, continental drift, and the collision of plates. Remnants of the original ocean floor are preserved as ophiolites in the Harz mountain range in Germany and in the Lizard Peninsula of southwestern England. In the Devonian Period a continental margin ran along the north side of the belt in Devon and Cornwall (England) on which extensive sandstones derived from the continent were deposited. In the Carboniferous Period shallow-water limestones were laid down in the area of the Pennines of England on a shelf or carbonate bank; that formation passes southward into deeper-water shales of the Culm Trench of southwestern England, within which are found the pillow lavas (aggregates of ovoid masses, resembling pillows), gabbros, and serpentinites of the Lizard ophiolite. In Brittany there is an island arc with lavas and granites that resulted from subduction of the ocean floor. The main Hercynian suture zone of the collided plates extends from the south side of Brittany to the Massif Central.
Throughout much of Europe there is evidence of extensive thrusting, implying that there was appreciable thickening of the continental crust and the formation of a Tibetan-style plateau across the Hercynian orogeny. The thickening led to melting of the lower crust and the formation of large numbers of late Carboniferous granites, especially in the Massif Central. The plateau became overly thick and unstable, and that caused the formation of rifts that developed into coal-bearing basins—as in Silesia (Poland) and the Massif Central—in the late Carboniferous and Permian periods (i.e., between about 299 and 252 million years ago).
Indeed, the varied tectonic development of the Hercynian orogeny gave rise to widespread mineral deposits in many environments, which have been exploited in the economic development of many countries. Lead and zinc deposits occur in shelf carbonate sediments in Ireland and the Pennines of England; there are deposits of copper, lead, and zinc sulfides that formed in rifts in Silesia (Poland and eastern Germany) and at the Riotinto Mines in southwestern Spain; and important mineral deposits of tin, tungsten, and uranium are associated with crustal melt granites in Cornwall, the Massif Central, and Spain and Portugal.
Uralian orogenic belt
The Uralian orogenic belt, which forms the traditional eastern boundary of Europe, extends for about 2,175 miles (3,500 km) from the Aral Sea in the south to the northeasternmost tip of Severny Island, one of the two large islands that constitute most of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. It encompasses the Mughalzhar (Mugodzhar) Hills north of the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains proper (which stretch for some 1,550 miles [2,500 km] from the bend of the Ural River in the south to the fringe of the Arctic in the north), the northern fingerlike extension of the Pay-Khoy Ridge, and Novaya Zemlya. The belt developed late in the Paleozoic as a result of collision between Asia and Europe. The earliest rifts in old Precambrian basement rocks began about 500 million years ago, and those developed into the floor of a new ocean. Island arcs formed in the later Silurian Period, and countless ophiolitic slabs of ocean floor were thrust onto the continental margins. In Devonian times a considerable amount of thrusting and metamorphism occurred, and the final parts of the ocean floor were subducted; the result of that activity was that in the Permian Period there was a final collision between the continents of Europe and Asia that gave rise to the Uralian orogenic belt.
In the Permian Period there was widespread deposition of limestones followed by red sandstones, which were derived by erosion of the mountains. The Ural Mountains also are rich in mineral deposits—especially chromite, platinum, nickel, copper, and gold—which are associated with the major ophiolitic slabs of ocean floor distributed along the chain.
Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras
During the Mesozoic Era the Tethys Sea evolved in what is now southern Europe, and during the Cenozoic Era that ocean was destroyed by subduction as many small plates collided. Those events gave rise to the present-day tectonic mosaic that extends eastward from the Atlas Mountains of North Africa, the Baetic Cordillera of southern Spain, and the Pyrenees via the Alps of maritime France, Switzerland, and Austria to the Carpathians, the Apennines, the Dinaric Alps, the Balkan Mountains, and the Taurus and Pontic mountains of Turkey and finally to the Caucasus. Within those belts also must be included the Pannonian Basin of southeastern Europe and the Algerian (or Balearic), Alborán, Tyrrhenian, and Adriatic basins of the Mediterranean Sea. The main cause of the Alpine orogeny during the Cenozoic was the northward compression of Africa into Europe.
The first rifting of the older supercontinent, Pangea, began in the Triassic Period (i.e., about 252 to 201 million years ago). During that time salt and evaporites were deposited in lakes in rift valleys. By 220 million years ago, in the Late Triassic, the continental margins of the new, narrow Tethys Sea were commonly covered by shallow water over fossiliferous carbonate shelf sediments. During the Jurassic Period (about 201 to 145 million years ago) those carbonate shelves began to fragment, and in the Cretaceous Period (about 145 to 66 million years ago) the ocean floor was subducted in many places. That gave rise to volcanic island arcs, such as those of present-day Indonesia, and slabs of the Tethys ocean floor were thrust as ophiolites onto the continental margins. Extensive remnants of those ophiolites can be seen today, especially in the northern Apennines and in the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus.
Collisions between many of the continental microplates took place in the Eocene and Oligocene epochs (about 56 to 23 million years ago). For example, the Iberian Peninsula rotated to give rise to the Pyrenees, the Italian Peninsula drove northward and compressed into Europe, causing the growth of the Swiss-Austrian Alps, and Anatolia moved westward and gave rise to the Aegean arc and the mountains of Greece. It is interesting to consider that it was the opening of the Red Sea that caused the Arabian Peninsula to slide northward along the fault defined by the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley and in so doing to form at its front the Zagros Mountains of Iran, which in turn pushed Anatolia westward and caused the deformation in Greece. That scenario illustrates the interlinking and interdependence of all of those movements and structures in Europe with those outside the continent.
In the Miocene Epoch (i.e., about 23 to 5.3 million years ago) many of the early Mediterranean basins (e.g., Balearic, Tyrrhenian, Ionian, and Levantine) became isolated from the main Atlantic and Indo-Pacific oceans. In those basins were laid down huge deposits of salt and gypsum in evaporites up to more than a mile thick. Several other important mineral deposits in the European Alpine system also can be related to the stages of geologic evolution described above. Lead and zinc deposits occur in Triassic shelf limestones at Blei Hill in western Germany. Chromite ores are found in the ophiolites of the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey. Copper ores formed in pillow-bearing basaltic lavas of the Tethyan ocean floor; copper mines have been worked since antiquity in Cyprus, which lent its name to the element. The Tethys, however, was a relatively narrow ocean, and thus its limited subduction was not able to give rise, for example, to many granites and volcanic rocks, which might have contained useful mineral deposits.
Active seismic disturbances expressed as earthquakes are a reflection of the continuing compression between several of the European microplates. They are common in the Atlas Mountains, the island arc of the south Aegean, Greece, the island arc of the Tyrrhenian Sea in southern Italy, Turkey, and the Caucasus Mountains.
North European and Russian platforms
The approximately triangular area between the Caledonian orogeny in the west, the Hercynian orogeny and the Alps in the south, and the Urals in the east includes the Russian and North European platforms, as well as the North Sea. (That sea is a subsided fragment of the continental margin of Europe that was flooded with water from the melted glaciers of the last ice age.) Within that area the sedimentary rocks formed since the beginning of the Paleozoic are either undeformed or only weakly deformed, and thus that area contrasts with the surrounding orogenic belts described above, where such sediments are strongly deformed. Therefore, throughout much of the extensive Russian Platform the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic sediments have escaped the effects of the surrounding orogenies, and they are almost as horizontal as when they were laid down. Farther west, in the portion of the North European Platform that includes southeastern England and northern France, Mesozoic and early Cenozoic sediments have been weakly deformed into anticlines (arches of stratified rock) and synclines (troughs of stratified rock) by the Cenozoic deformation of the Alpine orogenic belt to the south. The deformation took place at a shallow level of the crust, and the sediments are still unmetamorphosed. For those reasons, the best place to find beautifully preserved Phanerozoic fossils is in the central triangular area of Europe. Moreover, under the North Sea there are gas reserves in Permian and Triassic sediments, and there are major oil reservoirs in Jurassic sediments.