About a peri-Gondwanan-North African enlarged acceptance of the Caledonian Orogeny

Abstract

The notion of Orogeny is restricted by most authors to the Ordovician-Devonian thermotectonic events that are associated with the Laurentia-Baltica-Avalonia suturing. However, some views consider an orogeny as the sum of tectonic, metamorphic, and magmatic events accompanying an entire supercontinent assembly or Wilson cycle. Following this line of thinking, the Caledonian and Variscan orogenies successively assembled Pangea. During the Ordovician Period, rifting, collision, deformation, metamorphism, and magmatism took place within the Gondwana margin. All these events are known today in the basement of the Cadomian terranes from Iberia through the Alps up to the Romanian Carpathians and Balkans. We plead here for the enlargement of the Orogeny terminology to these events and places, under the name of the North African orogenic event or North African orogen.