The East European Craton ( EEC ) is the core of the Baltica proto- plate and consists of three crustal regions/segments: Fennoscandia to the northwest, Volgo-Uralia to the east, and Sarmatia to the south. Fennoscandia includes the Baltic Shield (also referred to as the Fennoscandian Shield) and has a diversified accretionary Archaean and early Proterozoic crust , while Sarmatia has an older Archaean crust. The Volgo-Uralia region has a thick sedimentary cover, however deep drillings have revealed mostly Archaean crust. There are two shields in the East European Craton: the Baltic/Fennoscandian shield and the Ukrainian shield. The Ukrainian Shield and the Voronezh Massif consists of 3.2-3.8 Ga Archaean crust in the southwest and east, and 2.3-2.1 Ga Early Proterozoic orogenic belts .
7-612: The Moscow Basin is a major sedimentary basin and tectonic structural feature in the stable East European Craton . It has been widely studied by Russian and Scandinavian geologists. The Fennoscandia Shield and its components, the Russian Platform and Baltic Shield make up a large portion of the East European Craton. Crystalline basement rock formed between 2 billion and 1.65 billion years ago, with most activity ending around 1.75 billion years ago. The rocks were then affected by
14-769: A return to shallower marine conditions in the Ordovician and Silurian . A discontinuity from the Silurian into the Devonian suggests uplift and a major inversion, followed by off and on carbonate and shale deposition through the Carboniferous and Permian . Large sandstone deposits dating to the Triassic indicate a possible river delta environment. During the Paleozoic and through the Mesozoic
21-624: The Baltic Shield , and the Ukrainian Shield in the southwest. The lithospheric thickness also varies widely from 150–200 km in Ukraine to 120 km in southern Russia to over 250 km thick in the NE Baltic Shield, with extremely wide thickness fluctuations of the crustal layers. A shield in any craton is the area of exposed crystalline crust while the other part of the craton
28-821: The Alpine orogens . The intervening Late Palaeozoic Donbas Fold Belt, also known as part of the Dnieper-Donets Rift , transects Sarmatia, dividing it into the Ukrainian Shield and the Voronezh Massif. The southwestern boundary is known as the Trans European Suture Zone and separates the East European craton from the Phanerozoic orogens of Western Europe (e.g. Carpathians ). The northwestern margin of
35-581: The Sukhona Swell and Sukhon Arch formed next to the basin over the earlier Soligalich Graben-Trough. East European Craton The Ural Mountains are the eastern margin of the East European Craton and mark the Late Paleozoic orogenic collision of the East European Craton with the Siberian cratons . The southern margin of the craton is where Sarmatia is buried beneath thick Phanerozoic sediments and
42-762: The Svecofennian orogeny. Some of the oldest sedimentary rocks in the Moscow Basin date to the Late Riphean , in the form of siltstone and limestone. During this period the Moscow Rift formed and East European Craton extension followed earlier compression and inversion. A shallow marine environment appeared in the late Vendian extending into the Early Cambrian . By the late Cambrian, deeper marine conditions developed forming shale and siltstone. Carbonates deposited during
49-478: The craton is overlaid by the fold-and-thrust Early Paleozoic Caledonian orogen . The most distinguishable physiographic aspect of the East European Craton is the extensive 3-km and more-thick Riphean (middle to late Proterozoic) sedimentary cover over its 3000-km-wide platform area (East European Platform, EEP, also known as the Russian Platform). This is in sharp contrast to the exposed northwest portion of
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