East European Platform or Russian Platform is a large and flat area covered by

sediment Sediment is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of wind, water, or ice or by the force of gravity acting on the particles. For example, sa ...

s in

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whic ...

spanning from the

Ural Mountains The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...

to the

Tornquist Zone The Trans-European Suture Zone (TESZ), also known as the Tornquist Zone, is the crustal boundary between the Precambrian East European Craton and the Phanerozoic orogens of South-Western Europe. The zone runs from the North Sea to the Black Sea. ...

and from the Peri-Caspian Basin to the

Barents Sea The Barents Sea ( , also ; no, Barentshavet, ; russian: Баренцево море, Barentsevo More) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian territo ...

. Over

geological time The geologic time scale, or geological time scale, (GTS) is a representation of time based on the rock record of Earth. It is a system of chronological dating that uses chronostratigraphy (the process of relating strata to time) and geochron ...

the platform area has experienced

extension Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that satisfy the predicate * E ...

inversion Inversion or inversions may refer to: Arts * , a French gay magazine (1924/1925) * ''Inversion'' (artwork), a 2005 temporary sculpture in Houston, Texas * Inversion (music), a term with various meanings in music theory and musical set theory * ...

and compression. It has an area of about 6 million km². The East European Platform sediments can be classified into the following groups: a "protoplatform" of

metamorphosed Metamorphic rocks arise from the transformation of existing rock to new types of rock in a process called metamorphism. The original rock (protolith) is subjected to temperatures greater than and, often, elevated pressure of or more, causi ...

sediments at the bottom, a "quasiplatform" of slightly deformed sediments, a "cataplatform", and a "orthoplatform" at the top. The

Mesoproterozoic The Mesoproterozoic Era is a geologic era that occurred from . The Mesoproterozoic was the first era of Earth's history for which a fairly definitive geological record survives. Continents existed during the preceding era (the Paleoproterozoic), ...

Jotnian sediments of the Baltic area are examples of a "quasiplatform". The oldest preserved continuous sedimentary cover in the platform date to the

Vendian The Ediacaran Period ( ) is a geological period that spans 96 million years from the end of the Cryogenian Period 635 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Cambrian Period 538.8 Mya. It marks the end of the Proterozoic Eon, and the ...

about 650 million years ago. The cycles of deposition of platform sediments are related to the development of nearby orogenies like the

Timanide orogeny The Timanide Orogen (russian: Ороген Протоуралид-Тиманид, literally: "Protouralian–Timanide Orogen") is a pre-Uralian orogen that formed in northeastern Baltica during the Neoproterozoic in the Timanide orogeny. The orog ...

, the

Uralian orogeny The Uralian orogeny refers to the long series of linear deformation and mountain building events that raised the Ural Mountains, starting in the Late Carboniferous and Permian periods of the Palaeozoic Era, 323–299 and 299–251 million years ag ...

, the

Hercynian orogeny The Variscan or Hercynian orogeny was a geologic mountain-building event caused by Late Paleozoic continental collision between Euramerica (Laurussia) and Gondwana to form the supercontinent of Pangaea. Nomenclature The name ''Variscan'', comes f ...

and the

Caledonian orogeny The Caledonian orogeny was a mountain-building era recorded in the northern parts of the British Isles, the Scandinavian Mountains, Svalbard, eastern Greenland and parts of north-central Europe. The Caledonian orogeny encompasses events that ...

. The platform hosts numerous ancient

rift In geology, a rift is a linear zone where the lithosphere is being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics. Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted depression, called a graben, or more commonly a half-grabe ...

s or

aulacogen An aulacogen is a failed arm of a triple junction. Aulacogens are a part of plate tectonics where oceanic and continental crust is continuously being created, destroyed, and rearranged on the Earth’s surface. Specifically, aulacogens are a ri ...

s some of which date to the Riphean of the Proterozoic. In the Late Devonian

ing and

magmatic activity Magmatism is the emplacement of magma within and at the surface of the outer layers of a terrestrial planet, which solidifies as igneous rocks. It does so through magmatic activity or igneous activity, the production, intrusion and extrusion o ...

occurred within the platform leading to the formation of the

Dnieper-Donets Rift The Dnieper-Donets Rift or Pripyat-Dnieper-Donets Rift (also referred as a "paleorift" and "aulacogen") is an east-west running rift in the Sarmatian Craton that developed and was most active in the Paleozoic. The rift extends from the Caspian Dep ...

. This event was possibly caused by a cluster of

mantle plume A mantle plume is a proposed mechanism of convection within the Earth's mantle, hypothesized to explain anomalous volcanism. Because the plume head partially melts on reaching shallow depths, a plume is often invoked as the cause of volcanic hot ...

References

{{Geology of Europe Geology of Belarus Geology of Estonia Geology of European Russia Geology of Latvia Geology of Lithuania Geology of Poland Geology of Ukraine