The eastern French Pyrenees: from mountain belt to foreland basin Item Type Article Authors Satterfield, Dorothy; Rollinson, Hugh; Suthren, Roger Citation Satterfield, D., Rollinson, H., and Suthren, R. (2019). 'The eastern French Pyrenees: from mountain belt to foreland basin'. Geology Today: Localities explained 23, pp. 1-34. DOI 10.1111/gto.12291 Publisher Wiley Journal Geology Today Download date 28/09/2021 21:45:49 Item License http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10545/624573 Satterfield et al. – Classic Localities – French Pyrenees Classic localities explained: The Eastern French Pyrenees – from Mountain Belt to Foreland Basin Dorothy Satterfield, Hugh Rollinson and Roger Suthren Environmental Science, University of Derby, Kedleston Road, Derby, UK. DE22 1GB
[email protected] Abstract The Pyrenees are a young mountain belt formed as part of the larger Alpine collision zone. This excursion explores the development of the Pyrenean Mountain Belt in southern France, from its early extensional phase in the mid-Cretaceous and subsequent collisional phase, through its uplift and erosion in the Late Cretaceous and again in the Eocene, which led to the development of the Aquitaine-Languedoc foreland basin. One of the complexities of the Pyrenean Belt is that thrusting, uplift and erosion during the Pyrenean orogeny exposed older Variscan basement rocks in the central core of the mountains, rocks which were metamorphosed during an earlier event in the late Carboniferous. Thus, this orogenic belt also tells the story of an earlier collision between Laurussia in the north and Gondwana in the south at ca 300 Ma, prior to the onset of the Pyrenean events at ca.