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EUROPE | East European Craton
34 EUROPE/East European Craton
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EUROPE Contents East European Craton Timanides of Northern Russia Caledonides of Britain and Ireland Scandinavian Caledonides (with Greenland) Variscan Orogeny The Urals Permian Basins Permian to Recent Evolution The Alps Mediterranean Tectonics Holocene
East European Craton S V Bogdanova and R Gorbatschev, Lund University, Lund, Sweden R G Garetsky, Institute of Geological Sciences, Minsk, Belarus ß 2005, Elsevier Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Introduction The East European Craton is the coherent mass of Precambrian continental crust in the north-eastern half of Europe. Across a suture zone between the North Sea and the Black Sea, that crust meets the younger, thinner, warmer, and more mobile crust of western and southern Europe. The overall area of the East European Craton is more than 6.7 million km2, including the shelf seas. Within the East European Craton, Precambrian crystalline crust is exposed in the Baltic (also Fennoscandian) and Ukrainian Shields as well as in minor areas in Belarus and the Voronezh Massif of southwestern Russia. Elsewhere, the craton is covered by the Late Proterozoic and Phanerozoic sedimentary deposits of the Russian Platform (Figure 1). The present state of the East European Craton is largely controlled by structures dating back to the time of its formation by the successive collision of three large, once independent, crustal segments – Fennoscandia, Sarmatia, and Volgo-Uralia – in the Palaeoproterozoic, ca. 2.1–1.7 Ga ago. This view was first proposed in 1993. Until then, the East
European Craton was regarded as a rather uniform region of numerous minor ‘blocks’ of Archaean crust set in a matrix of Proterozoic folded belts.
Margins and Borders Most of the margins of the East European Craton are characterized by the presence of younger mobile belts (Figure 1). In the north-west, the Scandinavian Caledonides (see Europe: Scandinavian Caledonides (with Greenland)) form a ca. 1800 km long strongly eroded, but still up to 15-km thick, pile of large thrust sheets built up of Early Palaeozoic and Precambrian rocks. These nappes derive from source areas far to the present west and were thrust atop the crystalline basement around 450–400 Ma ago. Autochthonous basement fabrics are still perceptible throughout the Caledonides, while geophysical and palaeogeographical data indicate that the Pre-Caledonian margin of the East European Craton may be as much as 400 km off the Atlantic coast of Scandinavia. Along the north-eastern margin of the East European Craton, the Timanide Belt extends between the Urals and northernmost Norway (see Europe: Timanides of Northern Russia). It features initial sedimentation along a passive continental margin, followed by compression, metamorphism, and igneous activity due to subduction and collision 650–600 Ma ago. The eastern limit of the East European Craton is the Late Palaeozoic Uralide Orogen, which represents the zone where ancient Europe collided with Asian terranes 350–300 Ma ago (see Europe: The Urals). Farther south-west, the margin of the East
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EUROPE Contents East European Craton Timanides of Northern Russia Caledonides of Britain and Ireland Scandinavian Caledonides (with Greenland) Variscan Orogeny The Urals Permian Basins Permian to Recent Evolution The Alps Mediterranean Tectonics Holocene
East European Craton S V Bogdanova and R Gorbatschev, Lund University, Lund, Sweden R G Garetsky, Institute of Geological Sciences, Minsk, Belarus ß 2005, Elsevier Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Introduction The East European Craton is the coherent mass of Precambrian continental crust in the north-eastern half of Europe. Across a suture zone between the North Sea and the Black Sea, that crust meets the younger, thinner, warmer, and more mobile crust of western and southern Europe. The overall area of the East European Craton is more than 6.7 million km2, including the shelf seas. Within the East European Craton, Precambrian crystalline crust is exposed in the Baltic (also Fennoscandian) and Ukrainian Shields as well as in minor areas in Belarus and the Voronezh Massif of southwestern Russia. Elsewhere, the craton is covered by the Late Proterozoic and Phanerozoic sedimentary deposits of the Russian Platform (Figure 1). The present state of the East European Craton is largely controlled by structures dating back to the time of its formation by the successive collision of three large, once independent, crustal segments – Fennoscandia, Sarmatia, and Volgo-Uralia – in the Palaeoproterozoic, ca. 2.1–1.7 Ga ago. This view was first proposed in 1993. Until then, the East
European Craton was regarded as a rather uniform region of numerous minor ‘blocks’ of Archaean crust set in a matrix of Proterozoic folded belts.
Margins and Borders Most of the margins of the East European Craton are characterized by the presence of younger mobile belts (Figure 1). In the north-west, the Scandinavian Caledonides (see Europe: Scandinavian Caledonides (with Greenland)) form a ca. 1800 km long strongly eroded, but still up to 15-km thick, pile of large thrust sheets built up of Early Palaeozoic and Precambrian rocks. These nappes derive from source areas far to the present west and were thrust atop the crystalline basement around 450–400 Ma ago. Autochthonous basement fabrics are still perceptible throughout the Caledonides, while geophysical and palaeogeographical data indicate that the Pre-Caledonian margin of the East European Craton may be as much as 400 km off the Atlantic coast of Scandinavia. Along the north-eastern margin of the East European Craton, the Timanide Belt extends between the Urals and northernmost Norway (see Europe: Timanides of Northern Russia). It features initial sedimentation along a passive continental margin, followed by compression, metamorphism, and igneous activity due to subduction and collision 650–600 Ma ago. The eastern limit of the East European Craton is the Late Palaeozoic Uralide Orogen, which represents the zone where ancient Europe collided with Asian terranes 350–300 Ma ago (see Europe: The Urals). Farther south-west, the margin of the East