Perunica

Perunica is the name of a terran , a land mass in geological history that broke away from the greater continent of Gondwana in the Ordovician , became part of the Armorica terran group in the course of the Devonian and was merged with Laurussia in the Upper Carboniferous in the course of the Variscan orogeny . It is named after the old Slavic storm god Perun .

Definition and history

The European Archipelago during the Cretaceous Period , the Bohemian Massif, forms an island with the Rhenish Massif, here with the abbreviation RH-BHH

The smallest continent of Perunica today corresponds roughly to Bohemia and the adjacent low mountain ranges in Bavaria and Austria . The Cambrian faunas clearly indicate a proximity to the Armorica Terrang group and Gondwana.

In the Ordovician, however, the paleomagnetic data and the faunas indicate that Perunica had separated from Gondwana in the Lower Ordovician and that a migration to the north to Baltica, initially independent of the rest of the Armorica terran , began. According to a fauna analysis, Perunica was the most isolated in the Katium / Sandbian (lower Upper Ordovician). It can therefore not have been part of Gondwana and the Armorica Terrang group, which were still connected at that time. In the Devonian, the Armorica group collided with blocks of crust that had broken off from the southern edge of Laurussia. In the Upper Carboniferous, Perunica and the Armorica terran group were merged with Laurussia in the Variscan Orogeny .

With the breakup of Pangea at the beginning of the Mesozoic Era , the terran reappeared as an independent unit and formed with the surrounding terran alternately different peninsulas and islands, which were surrounded by shallow seas (Jurassic Sea) and deep-sea trenches ( Pennine Ocean ) that belonged to the Thetys Sea . In the Palaeogene the terran was finally integrated into the Eurasian continent with the alpine folding .

literature

• LRM Cocks and TH Torsvik: European geography in a global context from the Vendian to the end of the Palaeozoic. In: DG Gee and RA Stephenson (eds.): European Lithosphere Dynamics. Geological Society London Memoirs, 32: 83-95, London 2006 ISSN  0435-4052

Web links, sources

• Shadows of old continents (Rocky Austria, Federal Geological Institute) ( Memento from August 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive )

1. ↑ Europe in the Paleozoic. P. 18 , accessed March 10, 2010 . 
2. ↑ Geological time travel between Franconia Alb and Bohemia, published by Geopark Bayern-Böhmen e. V., Parkstein in 2011, pp. 20–28.