The Variscides in the NW Corner of Africa
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00025798%3A_____%2F24%3A10169402" target="_blank" >RIV/00025798:_____/24:10169402 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48299-1_6" target="_blank" >https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48299-1_6</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48299-1_6" target="_blank" >10.1007/978-3-031-48299-1_6</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
The Variscides in the NW Corner of Africa
Original language description
This chapter is dedicated to the Variscan belt segment that is outcropping in NW Africa, covering Morocco, NW Algeria and NW of Mauritania. The NW Africa Variscan belt is considered an intraplate orogen, whose emplacement is largely due to the oceanic closure between Gondwana and Laurentia mainly from Carboniferous to Permian. This chapter re-examines the knowledge we have of this segment of the Variscan belt, reviewing the story over the time period spanning Devonian to Cisuralian and considering the up-to-date pending questions. A tectono-stratigraphical summary of the different domains of the belt is given and detailed for this time period. The "intraplate" character of the belt has been well-evidenced in northern Morocco and NW Algeria. Separated by the South (or Sub-) Meseta Zone, the Meseta and the Anti-Atlas and associated Carboniferous basins compose this northern part of the belt which shows a nice intraplate appendix to the southeast, in the Ougarta belt. Toward the southwest, the NW Africa Variscan belt shows a major extension in the Souttoufides belt, that fringes Gondwana from Western Anti-Atlas to the Morocco-Mauritania boundary along what is now the Atlantic coast. There, the opposite vergences of the Souttoufides, on one hand, and the Appalachian-Alleghanian belt, on the other hand, suggest a more classical double-verging orogen, where researchers are still looking for the past oceanic suture, probably lost in the Central Atlantic opening. The intraplate characteristics of northern Morocco/NW Algeria are now undisputed but the timing of Variscan deformation remains to be firmly established, regarding the initiation of the Variscan compression there. In this sense, we question the meaning of the precocious Eovariscan tectonic phase in NW Africa (Late Devonian(?)-Tournaisian/Early Visean) and propose a working alternative by considering this phase to represent a pre-orogenic stage, mainly extensional. As for the Souttoufides belt, knowledge is still poor about its Late Paleozoic story and its proper integration into the general Late Paleozoic framework. A state of the art is presented, that will likely be refined with the important geochronological and petrographical research that has been undertaken and that keeps going on for more than a decade. We try as much as we can to offer a modern view of the NW Africa Variscan belt by emphasizing the scientific questions that still await answers.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
C - Chapter in a specialist book
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
10505 - Geology
Result continuities
Project
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Continuities
V - Vyzkumna aktivita podporovana z jinych verejnych zdroju
Others
Publication year
2024
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Book/collection name
The Geology of North Africa
ISBN
978-3-031-48298-4
Number of pages of the result
41
Pages from-to
145-185
Number of pages of the book
660
Publisher name
Springer
Place of publication
Switzerland
UT code for WoS chapter
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