Paleogeography of the Alps
Alpenseminar by Taufeeq Dhansay The formation of the Alpine Mountains can be broadly defined by the convergent movement of several continental plates and the associated opening and closing of oceanic basins. The science of Paleogeography aims to travel back in deep time and figure out how these different plates would have moved, and ultimately collided to form these magnificent mountains. The protagonists Firstly, we should identify the main players (i.e. plates) in this story. This includes the larger African/Nubian and European plates, and the smaller Adriatic/Apulian and Iberian Plates. Below is a figure of the present-day alps and how its underlying tectonic units fit together: Broad overview of the major plates associated with the Alpine Orogeny, after Handy et al., 2010 Importantly, zones between these plates (i.e. demarcated by darker colours on the above map) represent regions that, in particular, experienced varying levels of tectonism and/metamorp
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