Annales de la Société Géologique de Belgique

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Abstract

Current knowledge is presented on the structural-stratigraphic development of post-Cadomian to earliest Silurian depositional environments and the palaeogeography of western and eastern Germany. The German segment of Late Proterozoic Europe belonged to an outboard rampart of the Afro-Mediterranean portion of Gondwana during an Early Palaeozoic interval of crustal extension after Cadomian (late Riphaean) multi-plate collision. This extensional crustal thinning produced assemblages of rifted microplates during Vendian to Early Ordovician times, but basaltic volcanics emerged only within incipient localized grabens. Mid-Palaeozoic extensional movements concentrating along the «Moldanubian/Saxothuringian» interface started with Late Ordovician or Early Silurian foundering of a narrow basin which developed into the incipient Rheic Ocean during the deposition of Silurian graptolitic alum shales and cherts in an initial fore-arc setting. Back-arc Variscan basins developed in the Devonian and Early Carboniferous. Upon completion of an anti-clockwise rotational course, the East European Platform docked with the North German microplate of peri-Gondwana along the Tornquist Lineament during Late Ordovician to Early Silurian time. An attempt at an event-stratigraphic analysis for the Vendian-Early Palaeozoic deposits of Germany is proposed.

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