During its Riphean to Palaeozoic evolution, the East European Craton was affected by rift phases during Early, Middle and Late Riphean, early Vendian, early Palaeozoic, Early Devonian and Middle-Late Devonian times and again at the transition from the Carboniferous to the Permian and the Permian to the Triassic. These main rifting cycles were separated by phases of intraplate compressional tectonics at the transition from the Early to the Middle Riphean, the Middle to the Late Riphean, the Late Riphean to the Vendian, during the mid-Early Cambrian, at the transition from the Cambrian to the Ordovician, the Silurian to the Early Devonian, the Early to the Middle Devonian, the Carboniferous to Permian and the Triassic to the Jurassic. Main rift cycles axe dynamically related to the separation of continental terranes from the margins of the East European Craton and the opening of Atlantic-type palaeo-oceans and/or back-arc basins. Phases of intraplate compression, causing inversion of extensional basins, coincide with the development of collisional belts along the margins of the East European Craton. The origin and evolution of sedimentary basins on the East European Craton was governed by repeatedly changing regional stress fields. Periods of stress field changes coincide with changes in the drift direction, velocity and rotation of the East European plate and its interaction with adjacent plates. Intraplate magmatism was controlled by changes in stress fields and by mantle hot-spot activity. Geodynamieally speaking, different types of magmatism occurred simultaneously.

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The Greater Caucasus (GC) fold-and-thrust belt lies on the southern deformed edge of the Scythian Platform (SP) and results from the Cenozoic structural inversion of a deep marine Mesozoic basin in response to the northward displacement of the Transcaucasus (lying south of the GC) subsequent to the Arabia-Eurasia collision. A review of existing and newly acquired data has allowed a reconstruction of the GC history through the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. In Permo(?)-Triassic times, rifting developed along at least the northern part of the belt. Structural inversion of the basin occurred during the Late Triassic corresponding to the Eo-Cimmerian orogeny, documented SE of the GC and probably linked to the accretion of what are now Iranian terranes along the continental margin. Renewed development of extensional basin formation in the area of the present-day GC began in Sinemurian-Pliensbachian times with rift activity encompassing the Mid-Jurassic. Rifting led to extreme thinning of the underlying continental crust by the Aalenian and concomitant extrusion of mid-ocean ridge basalt lavas. A Bathonian unconformity is observed on both sides of the basin and may either correspond to the end of active rifting and the onset of post-rift basin development or be the record of collision further south along the former Mesozoic active margin. The post-rift phase began with deposition of Late Jurassic platform-type sediments onto the margins and a flysch-like unit in its deeper part, which has transgressed the basin during the Cretaceous and Early Cenozoic. An initial phase of shortening occurred in the Late Eocene under a NE-SW compressional stress regime. A second shortening event that began in the Mid-Miocene (Sarmatian), accompanied by significant uplift of the belt, continues at present. It is related to the final collision of Arabia with Eurasia and led to the development of the present-day south-vergent GC fold-and-thrust belt. Some north-vergent retrothrusts are present in the western GC and a few more in the eastern GC, where a fan-shaped belt can be observed. The mechanisms responsible for the large-scale structure of the belt remain a matter of debate because the deep crustal structure of the GC is not well known. Some (mainly Russian) geoscientists have argued that the GC is an inverted basin squeezed between deep (near)-vertical faults representing the boundaries between the GC and the SP to the north and the GC and the Transcaucasus to the south. Another model, supported in part by the distribution of earthquake hypocentres, proposes the existence of south-vergent thrusts flattening at depth, along which the Transcaucasus plunges beneath the GC and the SP. In this model, a thick-skinned mode of deformation prevailed in the central part of the GC whereas the western and eastern parts display the attributes of thin-skinned fold-and-thrust belts, although, in general, the two styles of deformation coexist along the belt. The present-day high elevation observed only in the central part of the belt would have resulted...

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