Das geotektonische Problem der Glarner Alpen Geologische Alpenforschungen

Abstract

A MORE than ordinary interest attaches to these two works by Prof. Rothpletz, as they treat of the boundary district between the Eastern and Western Alps. This district is already famous in geology, and has attracted all comers by its problems. My own Opinion regarding its structure had been formed while I wrote my paper on the “Torsion-structure of the Dolomites” in 1898, and was given by me at the British Association Meeting and at the International Geographical Congress in 1899. I then compared the structure of this district with that of the areas of inthrow of various sizes that I had studied in the Dolomites. I described the Glarus-Prattigau area as a local area of depression or crust-basin within the Alps, around which fold-arcs had formed peripherally. Thrust-masses, taking origin in the peripheral arches, had moved towards the centre of the basin. And as across this area of depression the Alpine wave-movement of compression had also passed, the leading strike-curve of the Alps had been superinduced upon the local curves, making various angles with those, so that the actual crust-forms now presented to us were resultant combinations of the local movements round the subordinate basin, with the more extended Alpine movements round the North Italian crust-basins. Das geotektonische Problem der Glarner Alpen. A. Rothpletz. Pp. vii + 251, and Atlas. (Jena: Fischer, 1898.) Geologische Alpenforschungen. A. Rothpletz. I. Pp. viii + 176. (Munich: J. Lindauersche, 1900.)