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The Valais Ocean is a disappeared piece of oceanic crust which was situated between the continent Europe and the microcontinent Iberia. The Valais Ocean is together with other small disappeared oceanic basins often called the Alpine or Western Tethys Ocean. The Piemont-Liguria basin or the Piemont-Liguria Ocean (sometimes only one of the two names is used, for example: Piemonte Ocean) was a former piece of oceanic crust that is seen as part of the Tethys Ocean. ...
The Adriatic or Apulian Plate is a small tectonic plate that broke away from the African plate along a large transform fault in the Cretaceous period. ...
Age of oceanic crust Oceanic crust is the part of Earths lithosphere which underlies the ocean basins. ...
European redirects here. ...
Dymaxion map by Buckminster Fuller shows land mass with minimal distortion as only one continuous continent A continent (Latin continere, to hold together) is a large continuous land mass. ...
Iberia can mean: The Iberian peninsula of South west Europe; That part of it once inhabited by the Iberians, who spoke the Iberian language. ...
Basin has several meanings: Look up basin in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
Tethys Ocean (here labeled Tethys Sea) divides Pangea into two supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana The Tethys Ocean was a Mesozoic era ocean that existed between the continents of Gondwana and Laurasia before the opening of the Indian Ocean. ...
Tectonic history After the breakup of Pangaea in the early Mesozoic age the continents Africa, South America, Europe and North America began to move away from each other. The breaking up or rifting was not a process that happened along one clear line. At the southern edge of the European plate the microcontinent Iberia began also to break away from Europe. In the western part of the rift that separated the two landmasses oceanic crust was formed in what is at present the Gulf of Biscay, while in the eastern part the Valais Ocean was formed. Map of Pangaea Pangaea or Pangea (derived from Παγγαία, Greek meaning all earth) is the name given to the supercontinent that is believed to have existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras, before the process of plate tectonics separated each of the component continents into their current configuration. ...
The Mesozoic is one of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon. ...
South America South America is a continent crossed by the equator, with most of its area in the Southern Hemisphere. ...
World map showing North America A satellite composite image of North America. ...
In geology, a rift is a place where the Earths lithosphere is expanding. ...
Not to be confused with the North American Biscayne Bay. ...
When in the Cretaceous period Africa began to move towards Europe again the Valais Ocean was sandwiched between the two continents. To the east the Valais oceanic crust, together with a piece of Iberian continental crust (called the Briançonnais terrane) subducted beneath the Apulian plate, a part of the African tectonic plate that had begun to move independently. This process eventually lead to the formation of the Alps. To the west no subduction took place, but the Iberian plate moved along and against the European plate along a large transform fault, which lead to the formation of the Pyrenees. The Cretaceous Period is one of the major divisions of the geologic timescale, reaching from the end of the Jurassic Period (i. ...
The continental crust is the layer of granitic, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks which form the continents and the areas of shallow seabed close to their shores, known as continental shelves. ...
The Juan de Fuca plate sinks below the North America plate at the Cascadia subduction zone. ...
The Adriatic or Apulian Plate is a small tectonic plate that broke away from the African plate along a large transform fault in the Cretaceous period. ...
The tectonic plates of the world were mapped in the second half of the 20th century. ...
The West face of the Petit Dru above the Chamonix valley near the Mer de Glace. ...
A transform fault is a geological fault that is a special case of strike-slip faulting which terminates abruptly, at both ends, at a major transverse geological feature. ...
Central Pyrenees. ...
Fragments of Valais oceanic crust have been obducted and can be found as ophiolites in the Penninic nappes of the Alps. Obduction is the overthrusting of continental crust by oceanic crust or mantle rocks. ...
Ophiolites are sections of oceanic lithosphere that have been uplifted or emplaced to be exposed within continental crustal rocks. ...
This article is about the geology of the (European) Alps. ...
Name The Valais Ocean is named after the Swiss canton Valais. The twenty-six cantons of Switzerland are the states of the federal state of Switzerland. ...
The Valais (German: ) is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland in the south-western part of the country, in the Pennine Alps around the valley of the Rhone River from its springs to Lake Geneva. ...
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