The tectonic frame of the Variscan–Alleghanian orogen in Southern Europe and Northern Africa

Abstract

By confronting different geological and geophysical data, we attempt to reconstruct the Variscan–Alleghanian orogenic belt, with especial emphasis on the links between Iberia, northwest Africa, and northeast America. The northern Iberia transect corresponds to the rifted margin of Gondwana, inverted during the Variscan orogeny and overthrust in its westernmost sector by a pile of allochthonous units, some of them with oceanic affinity and witnessing an orogenic suture. The southern Iberia section reveals two sutures at both boundaries of a terrane closely tied to Gondwana, namely the Ossa–Morena Zone. The southern boundary of this zone (i.e., the contact with the South Portuguese Zone) is enhanced by amphibolites with oceanic affinity and probably represents the suture of the Rheic Ocean. The Moroccan Variscides can be divided into: (i) a western external zone, namely the Coastal Block and the Central Massif; (ii) an internal zone, namely the Eastern Meseta; (iii) an eastern external zone represented in the Anti Atlas region; and (iv) the African cratonic foreland. Since neither ophiolites nor eclogites crop out along this transect of the orogen, we consider it to be an incomplete transect, lacking the main suture zone (Rheic Ocean). Stratigraphic and faunal affinities between the Moroccan Meseta, on the one hand, and the Central Iberian, Western Asturian–Leonese, and Cantabrian zones of Iberia, on the other hand, suggest that they may well have been part of a common pre-orogenic domain at the margin of Gondwana. On the contrary, there are no counterparts in Morocco for the Ossa–Morena Zone. Thus, the northern Iberia palaeogeographic zones would prolong in the Moroccan Meseta through an eastward arcuate structure, while the suture of the Rheic Ocean would do so offshore Morocco. In our reconstruction, an Avalonian spur (Grand Banks indentor), which included the Caledonian Sehoul block in northern Morocco and the crust of the South Portuguese Zone in SW Iberia, played an important role on the kinematic evolution of the orogen as well as on the final configuration of the suture of the Rheic Ocean. This suture would mould around the Avalonian spur, being laterally translated to southeastern Nova Scotia–Newfoundland.