Pennine Ocean

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The Pennine Ocean was an ocean basin on the southern edge of the European Plate that existed from the Triassic to the Cretaceous Period. The shelf area adjacent to the north today forms u. a. the Helvetic of the Alps, the shelf adjacent to the south, was on the Apulian plate and the Adriatic plate connected to it (today the Eastern and Southern Alps ). The Pennine Ocean, together with the adjacent Schelfen the western Tethys can be attributed to space, was built during the Alpine orogeny fully closed, and now forms the majority of the units of the Penninikums .

The ocean was at least temporally and partially divided internally into two oceanic areas by a central threshold area. The Valais Ocean in the north can be traced as a separate marine space from the west to the central eastern Alps, to the west a connection on the northern edge of today's Iberian Peninsula ( Iberia ) over the Pyrenees to the Atlantic is assumed. However, this connection is controversial. The Ligurian Ocean in the south was an extensive ocean basin in which large areas of oceanic crust existed.

The two oceanic areas were separated by the threshold area of ​​the Briançonnais . The exact geological position of Briançonnais is still the subject of research. The origin is discussed as a remnant of a terran or as the former eastern tip of Iberia.

Sediments were delivered into the ocean from the continental margins and the central sill of the Briançonnais. The total thickness of the deposited layers is up to over 5,000 m.

See also

literature

  • SM Schmid, B. Fügenschuh, E. Kissling, R. Schuster: Tectonic map and overall architecture of the Alpine orogen . In: Eclogae geologicae Helvetiae . tape 97 . Birkhäuser Verlag, 2004, ISSN  0012-9402 , p. 93-117 . PDF
  • Reinhard Schönenberg, Joachim Neugebauer: Introduction to the geology of Europe . 4th edition. Verlag Rombach, Freiburg 1981, ISBN 3-7930-0914-9 , p. 185 ff .

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