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Alpine-Himalayan Orogens |
Department of Geology and Mineralogy, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PR
The Eastern Alps are centrally located on the north side of the European Alpine chains. Westwards they pass into the Central (Swiss) Alps and eastwards they bifurcate, passing into the Carpathians in the north and the Dinarids in the south which between them contain the Tertiary Hungarian Basin. In structural style the Eastern Alps provide a contrast to the Central and Western Alps, which are characterized at their deeper tectonic levels by the development of large scale recumbent folds; in the Eastern Alps the structure at the present level of erosion is typified by large allochthonous thrust sheets rather than folds.
Segment: this stretches from Grossglockner to the Gurktal Alps (12°40' to 14° E.), an E-W, along-strike, distance of 100 km. The northern margin of the belt is defined as the northern limit of Alpine thrusting and folding and the southern margin is defined as the north edge of the undeformed Po Basin, late Tertiary, clastics. Between these two margins the belt has an average width of 200 km.
Zones: four zones are recognized in the belt. From north to south they are (1) the Foreland, with little deformed Mesozoic and Tertiary strata overthrust at their south margin by the Northern zone (2) characterized by a complexly folded and thrust, dominantly Mesozoic, sequence. The Axial zone (3) consists of a pile of thrust, allochthonous sheets of Mesozoic strata and Palaeozoic basement rocks. In the Southern zone (4) basement rocks and a Carboniferous to early Tertiary cover sequence are both deformed
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