The

Western Carpathians The Western Carpathians are a mountain range and geomorphological province that forms the western part of the Carpathian Mountains. The mountain belt stretches from the Low Beskids range of the Eastern Carpathians along the border of Poland wit ...

are an arc-shaped

mountain range A mountain range or hill range is a series of mountains or hills arranged in a line and connected by high ground. A mountain system or mountain belt is a group of mountain ranges with similarity in form, structure, and alignment that have arise ...

, the northern branch of the

Alpine Alpine may refer to any mountainous region. It may also refer to: Places Europe * Alps, a European mountain range ** Alpine states, which overlap with the European range Australia * Alpine, New South Wales, a Northern Village * Alpine National Pa ...

Himalaya The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...

n fold and thrust system called the

Alpide belt The Alpide belt or Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt,K.M. Storetvedt, K. M., ''The Tethys Sea and the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt; mega-elements in a new global tectonic system,'' Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, Volume 62, Issues 1 ...

, which evolved during the Alpine orogeny. In particular, their pre- Cenozoic evolution is very similar to that of the

Eastern Alps Eastern Alps is the name given to the eastern half of the Alps, usually defined as the area east of a line from Lake Constance and the Alpine Rhine valley up to the Splügen Pass at the Alpine divide and down the Liro River to Lake Como in t ...

, and they constitute a transition between the Eastern Alps and the

Eastern Carpathians Divisions of the Carpathians are a categorization of the Carpathian mountains system. Below is a detailed overview of the major subdivisions and ranges of the Carpathian Mountains. The Carpathians are a "subsystem" of a bigger Alps-Himalaya Sy ...

. The geological evolution of individual parts of the chain is complex, a result of

tectonic Tectonics (; ) are the processes that control the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. These include the processes of mountain building, the growth and behavior of the strong, old cores of continents ...

processes like folding,

thrusting Thrust is a reaction force described quantitatively by Newton's third law. When a system expels or accelerates mass in one direction, the accelerated mass will cause a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction to be applied to that sys ...

and the formation of

sedimentary basin Sedimentary basins are region-scale depressions of the Earth's crust where subsidence has occurred and a thick sequence of sediments have accumulated to form a large three-dimensional body of sedimentary rock. They form when long-term subside ...

s of various types during the

Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretace ...

and Cenozoic. These processes sometimes affected not only the sedimentary fill of the basins, but also, in some cases, the former basement. Many aspects of the geological structure of the Western Carpathians have not been completely studied and are subject to ongoing research and debate. The appropriate classification of a number of specific tectonic units is still not clear.

Geological definition

The Western Carpathians are separated from the

Alps The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Swi ...

by the valley of the river

Danube The Danube ( ; ) is a river that was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire and today connects 10 European countries, running through their territories or being a border. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , p ...

(only from the geographical point of view; the geological boundary is the so-called Carnuntum gate) and the Raaba line.Mísař, Z., 1987: ''Regionální geologie světa.'' Academia, Praha, 708 pp. To the east, the boundary with the Eastern Carpathians is placed formally in the valley of the river Uzh, but many tectonic divisions consider the Hornád fault system on the line Košice – Prešov the real geological boundary. The northern boundary is the thrust front that separates the

nappe In geology, a nappe or thrust sheet is a large sheetlike body of rock that has been moved more than or above a thrust fault from its original position. Nappes form in compressional tectonic settings like continental collision zones or on the o ...

s from the Carpathian Foredeep. In Bohemia the line

Znojmo Znojmo (; german: Znaim) is a town in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 33,000 inhabitants. Znojmo is the historical and cultural centre of southwestern Moravia and the second most populated town in the South Moravian ...

- Přerov-

Karviná Karviná (; pl, Karwina, , german: Karwin) is a city in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 50,000 inhabitants. It lies on the Olza River in the historical region of Cieszyn Silesia. Karviná is known as an indust ...

approximately forms the western boundary of the Western Carpathians. The southern boundary is not distinct (because of the interfingering boundary between the Carpathians and

lowland Upland and lowland are conditional descriptions of a plain based on elevation above sea level. In studies of the ecology of freshwater rivers, habitats are classified as upland or lowland. Definitions Upland and lowland are portions of p ...

s of the

Pannonian Basin The Pannonian Basin, or Carpathian Basin, is a large basin situated in south-east Central Europe. The geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewhat different sense, with only th ...

). According to some views it is south of the

Bükk The Bükk Mountains () are a section of the North Hungarian Mountains of the Inner Western Carpathians. Much of the area is included in the Bükk National Park. Geography Although Kékes, the highest point in Hungary, is not here but in the ...

and

Mátra The Mátra ( sk, Matra) is a mountain range in northern Hungary, between the towns Gyöngyös and Eger. The country's highest peak, Kékestető (1014 m), belongs to this mountain range. The Mátra is part of the North Hungarian Mountains ...

mountains in

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

Geological structure

There are several interpretations of the tectonic structure of the Western Carpathians. For quite a long time, the triple division has been used (

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