Saxo-Thuringia is classified as a tectonostratigraphic terrane belonging to the Armorican Terrane Collage (Cadomia). As a former part of the Avalonian Cadomian Orogenic Belt, it became (after Cadomian orogenic events, rift-related Cambro-Ordovician geodynamic processes and a northward drift within Late Ordovician to Early Silurian times), during Late Devonian to Early Carboniferous continent-continent collision, a part of the Central European Variscides. By making use of single zircon geochronology, geochemistry and basin analysis, geological processes were reconstructed from latest Neoproterozoic to Ordovician time: (1) 660 540 Ma: subduction, back-arc sedimentation and tectonomagmatic activity in a Cadomian continental island-arc setting marginal to Gondwana; (2) 540 Ma: obduction and deformation of the island arc and marginal basins; (3) 540-530 Ma: widespread plutonism related to the obduction-related Cadomian heating event and crustal extension; (4) 530-500 Ma: transform margin regime connected with strike-slip generated formation of Early to Mid-Cambrian pull-apart basins; (5) 500-490 Ma: Late Cambrian uplift and formation of a chemical weathering crust; (6) 490 470 Ma: Ordovician rift setting with related sedimentation regime and intense igneous activity; (7) 440-435 Ma: division from Gondwana and start of northward drift. The West African and the Amazonian Cratons of Gondwana, as well as parts of Brittany, were singled out by a study of inherited and detrital zircons as potential source areas in the hinterland of Saxo-Thuringia. the reconstructed Avalonian-Cadomian Orogenic Belt includes Western and Eastern Avalonia, Florida, Iberia, Carolina and Armorica. The last of these was named 'Cadomia' by Nance & Murphy (1994). As differential drift paths and individual block From." FRANKE, W., HAAK, V., ONCKEN, 0. r162 TANNER, D. (eds).
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