THE VOLGA-DON COLLISIONAL OROGEN IN THE EAST EUROPEAN CRATON AS THE PALEOPROTEROZOIC ANALOGUE OF THE HIMALAYAN-TIBETAN OROGEN

Abstract

The ca 2.0 Ga Volgo-Don fold-and-thrust belt, about 500 km in width and at least 600 km in length, covering an area of about 300000 square kilometers intervenes between the Archean Sarmatian and Volgo-Uralian proto-cratonic blocks of the East European Craton, both of which are coupled with 200–300 km thick sub-continental lithospheric mantle keels. The focus of this paper is the elucidation of its nature in order to answer the basic question how this and other thrust-and-fold belts could be formed in the Paleoproterozoic, and whether they are the same as or different from modern collision orogens. The active Himalayan-Tibet orogen is commonly thought of as the most extensively studied large, bi-verging fold-and thrust belt continental collision zone which may provide insight into key tectonic mechanisms for an understanding of orogenic processes in the Earth’s geological past. Precambrian orogens are tentatively perceived yet as something that was distinct from recent orogenic styles and was due to the initial elevated geotherm and higher radio-genic heat production in the early Earth.In this paper we report for the first time the revealation of the large, slightly eroded divergent Paleoproterozoic Volgo-Don orogen which is mostly composed of juvenile metasediments and comprises well-preserved patterns of the crustal orogenic architecture which are characteristic of the archetypal Himalayan-Tibet collisional orogen rather than of hot/ultra-hot Precambrian orogens based on numerical modeling.