Europe, second smallest of the world’s continents, composed of the westward-projecting peninsulas of Eurasia (the great landmass that it shares with Asia) and occupying nearly one-fifteenth of the world’s total land area. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the south (west to east) by the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, the Kuma-Manych Depression, and the Caspian Sea. The continent’s eastern boundary (north to south) runs along the Ural Mountains and then roughly southwest along the Emba (Zhem) River, terminating at the northern Caspian coast.
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NorwayNoresund, Nor.© Index Open
Europe’s largest islands and archipelagoes include Novaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, Svalbard, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the British Isles, the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta, Crete, and Cyprus. Its major peninsulas include Jutland and the Scandinavian, Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas. Indented by numerous bays, fjords, and seas, continental Europe’s highly irregular coastline is about 24,000 miles (38,000 km) long.
Sveti StefanSveti Stefan, Montenegro.© Architect/Shutterstock.com 
Faroe Islands: TórshavnHarbour of Tórshavn, capital of the Faroe Islands, Denmark.©Spumador/Shutterstock.com
Among the continents, Europe is an anomaly. Larger only than Australia, it is a small appendage of Eurasia. Yet the peninsular and insular western extremity of the continent, thrusting toward the North Atlantic Ocean, provides—thanks to its latitude and its physical geography—a relatively genial human habitat, and the long processes of human history came to mark off the region as the home of a distinctive civilization. In spite of its internal diversity, Europe has thus functioned, from the time it first emerged in the human consciousness, as a world apart, concentrating—to borrow a phrase from Christopher Marlowe—“infinite riches in a little room.”
As a conceptual construct, Europa, as the more learned of the ancient Greeks first conceived it, stood in sharp contrast to both Asia and Libya, the name then applied to the known northern part of Africa. Literally, Europa is now thought to have meant “Mainland,” rather than the earlier interpretation, “Sunset.” It appears to have suggested itself to the Greeks, in their maritime world, as an appropriate designation for the extensive northerly lands that lay beyond, lands with characteristics vaguely known yet clearly different from those inherent in the concepts of Asia and Libya—both of which, relatively prosperous and civilized, were associated closely with the culture of the Greeks and their predecessors. From the Greek perspective then, Europa was culturally backward and scantily settled. It was a barbarian world—that is, a non-Greek one, with its inhabitants making “bar-bar” noises in unintelligible tongues. Traders and travelers also reported that the Europe beyond Greece possessed distinctive physical units, with mountain systems and lowland river basins much larger than those familiar to inhabitants of the Mediterranean region. It was clear as well that a succession of climates, markedly different from those of the Mediterranean borderlands, were to be experienced as Europe was penetrated from the south. The spacious eastern steppes and, to the west and north, primeval forests as yet only marginally touched by human occupancy further underlined environmental contrasts.
The empire of ancient Rome, at its greatest extent in the 2nd century ce, revealed, and imprinted its culture on, much of the face of the continent. Trade relations beyond its frontiers also drew the remoter regions into its sphere. Yet it was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that modern science was able to draw with some precision the geologic and geographic lineaments of the European continent, the peoples of which had meanwhile achieved domination over—and set in motion vast countervailing movements among—the inhabitants of much of the rest of the globe (see Western colonialism).
As to the territorial limits of Europe, they may seem relatively clear on its seaward flanks, but many island groups far to the north and west—Svalbard, the Faroes, Iceland, and the Madeira and Canary islands—are considered European, while Greenland (though tied politically to Denmark) is conventionally allocated to North America. Furthermore, the Mediterranean coastlands of North Africa and southwestern Asia also exhibit some European physical and cultural affinities. Turkey and Cyprus in particular, while geologically Asian, possess elements of European culture and may be regarded as parts of Europe. Indeed, Turkey has sought membership in the European Union (EU), and the Republic of Cyprus joined the organization in 2004.
Europe’s boundaries have been especially uncertain, and hence much debated, on the east, where the continent merges, without sundering physical boundaries, with parts of western Asia. The eastward limits now adopted by most geographers exclude the Caucasus region and encompass a small portion of Kazakhstan, where the European boundary formed by the northern Caspian coast is connected to that of the Urals by Kazakhstan’s Emba River and Mughalzhar (Mugodzhar) Hills, themselves a southern extension of the Urals. Among the alternative boundaries proposed by geographers that have gained wide acceptance is a scheme that sees the crest of the Greater Caucasus range as the dividing line between Europe and Asia, placing Ciscaucasia, the northern part of the Caucasus region, in Europe and Transcaucasia, the southern part, in Asia. Another widely endorsed scheme puts the western portion of the Caucasus region in Europe and the eastern part—that is, the bulk of Azerbaijan and small portions of Armenia, Georgia, and Russia’s Caspian Sea coast—in Asia. Still another scheme with many adherents locates the continental boundary along the Aras River and the Turkish border, thereby putting Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia in Europe.
Europe’s eastern boundary, however, is not a cultural, political, or economic discontinuity on the land comparable, for example, to the insulating significance of the Himalayas, which clearly mark a northern limit to South Asian civilization. Inhabited plains, with only the minor interruption of the worn-down Urals, extend from central Europe to the Yenisey River in central Siberia. Slavic-based civilization dominates much of the territory occupied by the former Soviet Union from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean. That civilization is distinguished from the rest of Europe by legacies of a medieval Mongol-Tatar domination that precluded the sharing of many of the innovations and developments of European “Western civilization”; it became further distinctive during the relative isolation of the Soviet period. In partitioning the globe into meaningful large geographic units, therefore, most modern geographers treated the former Soviet Union as a distinct territorial entity, comparable to a continent, that was somewhat separate from Europe to the west and from Asia to the south and east; that distinction has been maintained for Russia, which constituted three-fourths of the Soviet Union.
Europe occupies some 4 million square miles (10 million square km) within the conventional borders assigned to it. That broad territory reveals no simple unity of geologic structure, landform, relief, or climate. Rocks of all geologic periods are exposed, and the operation of geologic forces during an immense succession of eras has contributed to the molding of the landscapes of mountain, plateau, and lowland and has bequeathed a variety of mineral reserves. Glaciation too has left its mark over wide areas, and the processes of erosion and deposition have created a highly variegated and compartmentalized countryside. Climatically, Europe benefits by having only a small proportion of its surface either too cold or too hot and dry for effective settlement and use. Regional climatic contrasts nevertheless exist: oceanic, Mediterranean, and continental types occur widely, as do gradations from one to the other. Associated vegetation and soil forms also show continual variety, but only portions of the dominant woodland that clothed most of the continent when humans first appeared now remain.
All in all, Europe enjoys a considerable and long-exploited resource base of soil, forest, sea, and minerals (notably coal), but its people are increasingly its principal resource. The continent, excluding Russia, contains less than one-tenth of the total population of the world, but in general its people are well educated and highly skilled. Europe also supports high densities of population, concentrated in urban-industrial regions. A growing percentage of people in urban areas are employed in a wide range of service activities, which have come to dominate the economies of most countries. Nonetheless, in manufacturing and agriculture Europe still occupies an eminent, if no longer necessarily predominant, position. The creation of the European Economic Community in 1957 and the EU in 1993 greatly enhanced economic cooperation between many of the continent’s countries. Europe’s continuing economic achievements are evidenced by its high standard of living and its successes in science, technology, and the arts.
European ParliamentEuropean Parliament building, Strasbourg, France.Lukas Riebling 
EU: historyAn overview of the European Union's history.© Open University
This article treats the physical and human geography of Europe. For discussion of individual countries of the continent, see specific articles by name—e.g., Italy, Poland, and United Kingdom. For discussion of major cities of the continent, see specific articles by name—e.g., Rome, Warsaw, and London. The principal articles discussing the historical and cultural development of the continent include history of Europe; European exploration; Western colonialism; Aegean civilizations; ancient Greek civilization; ancient Rome; Byzantine Empire; and Holy Roman Empire. Related topics are discussed in such articles as those on religion (e.g., Judaism and Roman Catholicism) and literature (e.g., Greek literature; Dutch literature; and Spanish literature).
Geologic history
The geologic record of the continent of Europe is a classic example of how a continent has grown through time. The Precambrian rocks in Europe range in age from about 3.8 billion to 541 million years. They are succeeded by rocks of the Paleozoic Era, which continued to about 252 million years ago; of the Mesozoic Era, which lasted until about 66 million years ago; and of the Cenozoic Era (i.e., the past 66 million years). The present shape of Europe did not finally emerge until about 5 million years ago. The types of rocks, tectonic landforms, and sedimentary basins that developed throughout the geologic history of Europe strongly influence human activities today.
The largest area of oldest rocks in the continent is the Baltic Shield, which has been eroded down to a low relief. The youngest rocks occur in the Alpine system, which still survives as high mountains. Between those belts are basins of sedimentary rocks that form rolling hills, as in the Paris Basin and southeastern England, or extensive plains, as in the Russian Platform. The North Sea is a submarine sedimentary basin on the shallow-water continental margin of the Atlantic Ocean. Iceland is a unique occurrence in Europe: it is a volcanic island situated on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge within the still-opening Atlantic Ocean.
General considerations
Tectonic framework
Precambrian rocks occur in three basic tectonic environments. The first is in shields, like the Baltic Shield, which are large areas of stable Precambrian rocks usually surrounded by later orogenic (mountain-forming) belts. The second is as basement to younger coverings of Phanerozoic sediments (i.e., deposits that have been laid down since the beginning of the Paleozoic). For example, the sediments of the Russian Platform are underlain by Precambrian basement, which extends from the Baltic Shield to the Ural Mountains, and Precambrian rocks underlie the Phanerozoic sediments in southeastern England. The Ukrainian Massif is an uplifted block of Precambrian basement that rises above the surrounding plain of younger sediments. The third environment occurs as relicts (residual landforms) in younger orogenic belts. For example, there are Precambrian rocks in the Bohemian Massif that are 1 billion years old and rocks in the Channel Islands in the English Channel that are 1.6 billion years old, both of which are remnants from the Middle Proterozoic Era within the late Paleozoic Hercynian belt. In the Hercynian belt in Bavaria, detrital zircons have been dated to 3.84 billion years ago, but the source of those rocks is not known.
Paleozoic sedimentary rocks occur either in sedimentary basins like the Russian Platform—which has never been affected by any periods of mountain formation and thus has sediments that are still flat-lying and fossiliferous—or within orogenic belts such as the Caledonian and Hercynian, where they commonly have been deformed by folding and thrusting, partly recrystallized, and subjected to intrusion by granites. Mesozoic-Cenozoic sediments occur either in a well-preserved state in sedimentary basins unaffected by orogenesis, as within the Russian Platform and under the North Sea, or in a highly deformed and metamorphosed state, as in the Alpine system.
Chronological summary
The geologic development of Europe may be summarized as follows. Archean rocks (those more than 2.5 billion years old) are the oldest of the Precambrian and crop out in the northern Baltic Shield, Ukraine, and northwestern Scotland. Two major Proterozoic (i.e., from about 2.5 billion to 541 million years ago) orogenic belts extend across the central and southern Baltic Shield. Thus, the shield has a composite origin, containing remnants of several Precambrian orogenic belts.
About 540 to 500 million years ago a series of new oceans opened, and their eventual closure gave rise to the Caledonian, Hercynian, and Uralian orogenic belts. There is considerable evidence suggesting that those belts developed by plate-tectonic processes, and they each have a history that lasted hundreds of millions of years. Formation of the belts gave rise to the supercontinent of Pangea; its fragmentation, beginning about 200 million years ago, gave rise to a new ocean, the Tethys Sea. Closure of that ocean about 50 million years ago, by subduction and plate-tectonic processes, led to the Alpine orogeny—e.g., the formation of the Alpine orogenic system, which extends from the Atlantic Ocean to Turkey and contains many separate orogenic belts (which remain as mountain chains), including the Pyrenees, the Baetic Cordillera, the Atlas Mountains, the Swiss-Austrian Alps, the Apennine Range, the Carpathian Mountains, the Dinaric Alps, and the Taurus and Pontic mountains. During the time that the Tethys was opening (about 180 million years ago), the Atlantic Ocean also began to open.
The Atlantic is still opening along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge under the ocean, with Iceland constituting an area of the ridge that is raised above sea level. The youngest tectonic activity in Europe is represented by the present-day volcanic eruptions in Iceland; by volcanoes such as Etna and Vesuvius; and by earthquakes, as in the Aegean region and in the Alpine system, which result from current stresses between the Eurasian and African plates.
Stratigraphy and structure
Precambrian
Compared with most of the other continents, Europe has few exposed rocks from Precambrian time (subdivided into the older Archean and the younger Proterozoic eons). Some granitic gneisses, which are more than 3 billion years old, crop out in the northern Baltic Shield, the Ukrainian Massif, and northwestern Scotland. Those rocks were recrystallized at a depth of about 12 miles (20 km) in the Archean crust, but their tectonic environment is poorly understood. The Baltic Shield exhibits successively younger orogenic belts toward the south, from the Archean relicts in the north to the Late Proterozoic Sveconorwegian belt in southwestern Norway. A major orogenic belt in the north, the Svecofennian, developed in the Early Proterozoic Era (2.5 to 1.6 billion years ago); it now occupies the bulk of the Baltic Shield, especially in Finland and Sweden, where it extends from the Kola Peninsula to the Gulf of Finland near Helsinki. The younger Sveconorwegian is a north–south-trending orogenic belt that developed between 1.2 billion and 850 million years ago. It occupies southern Norway and the adjacent area of southwestern Sweden between Oslo (Norway) and Gothenburg (Sweden). On its northern side it has been reactivated almost beyond recognition within the Paleozoic Caledonian orogenic belt. The Ukrainian Massif and the small Laxfordian belt in northwestern Scotland consist mainly of granitic rocks and highly deformed and metamorphosed schists and gneisses that originally were sediments and volcanics; their age is similar to that of the Svecofennian belt. In northwestern Scotland there also is a north–south-trending belt of Proterozoic reddish brown sandstones and conglomerates that is about 1 billion years old; those sediments may be the erosional products or molasse of a 1.2-billion-year-old orogenic belt, of which there are a few relicts within the Caledonian belt of Scotland. The Bohemian Massif is a diamond-shaped block in the heart of Europe, which has been heavily affected by the late Paleozoic Hercynian orogeny.
Many of the rocks formed in the Late Archean (about 2.7 billion years ago) or Early Proterozoic (Svecofennian times) or even later in the Proterozoic (about 1 billion years ago) were strongly deformed in several Precambrian orogenies and thus are now schists, gneisses, and amphibolites, accompanied by a variety of granites. Near the end of the Precambrian—about 800 to 541 million years ago—there was widespread deposition of conglomerates, sandstones, clays, and some volcanic sediments, which make up the Eocambrian (or Vendian) group; those were derived from the erosion of uplifted Precambrian mountains. They are well known for two features. First are their glacial sediments, which were deposited at a time of worldwide glaciation; they occur in northwestern Scotland (Islay Island), western Ireland, Norway (Finnmark and West Spitzbergen), Sweden, France (Normandy), and the Czech Republic (Bohemian Massif). Second is the occurrence of impressions of soft-bodied organisms, such as seaweed, jellyfish, and worms, which represent the beginnings of metazoan (many-celled) life before the explosion of life-forms with hard parts for skeletons that became abundant in the early Cambrian Period. Those impressions occur in Charnwood Forest in central England, southern Wales, northern Sweden, Ukraine, and several localities in the Russian Platform. The Precambrian rocks of Europe provide a rich source of economic minerals that sustain human activities, such as major deposits of iron ore at Kiruna in northern Sweden and Kryvyy Rih in Ukraine; tin deposits associated with granites in Finland; extensive copper–nickel sulfide ores across Finland, especially at Outokumpu, and in Sweden; and magnetite ores containing vanadium and titanium in northern Finland.
Paleozoic Era
The Paleozoic (i.e., from about 541 to 252 million years ago) tectonic geology of Europe can be divided into two parts: the major orogenic belts of the Caledonian (or Caledonides), the Hercynian (or Hercynides), and the Uralian (or Uralides); and the undisturbed, mostly subsurface (and thus poorly known) Paleozoic sediments in the triangular area between the belts in the Russian Platform.
Caledonian orogenic belt
The major factor that controlled the early mid-Paleozoic development of Europe was the opening and closing of the Iapetus Ocean, which gave rise to the Caledonian orogenic belt that extends from Ireland and Wales through northern England and Scotland to western Norway and northward to Finnmark in northern Norway. The belt is confined between the stable blocks of the Baltic Shield and the Precambrian belt of northwestern Scotland. Remnants of the Iapetus seafloor are seen in ophiolites (slices of the seafloor that were thrust upward by the action of plate tectonics) at Ballantrae in the Strathclyde region of Scotland and near Bergen in Norway. During the Cambrian Period (about 541 to 485 million years ago), widening of the Iapetus gave rise to extensive shelf seas on the bordering continents, which deposited a thin cover of limestone and shale with a remarkable diversity of fossils of numerous marine invertebrates. The existence of that sea can be demonstrated by the presence of trilobite and graptolite fossils in northern Scotland, which was on one side of the sea, that are significantly different from those in central England and southern Norway, which were on the other side. In the Ordovician Period (about 485 to 444 million years ago) the sea began to close by subduction, giving rise to major magmatic belts with lavas and tuffs in the Lake District of northern England and in Snowdonia National Park in northern Wales—where there is associated gold and copper mineralization—and to many granites in the Highlands of Scotland.
In the Silurian Period (about 444 to 419 million years ago) the Iapetus Ocean closed, with the result that the bordering continental blocks collided, giving rise to deformation, metamorphism, and the orogeny of the Caledonian belt. In the late Silurian, early land plants and the first freshwater fish appeared in lakes on the belt. The rifts of the Orkney Basin developed in the Devonian Period (about 419 to 359 million years ago) on top of the thickened and unstable crust of the Caledonian orogenic belt in a manner comparable to the Quaternary rifts of Tibet (i.e., those that have appeared in the past 2.6 million years), which have a crust thickened by the Himalayan orogeny of the Paleogene and Neogene periods (about 66 to 2.6 million years ago). Erosion of the uplifted mountain belt in the Devonian led to deposition of sandstones and conglomerates in basins over a wide region from the British Isles to the western Russian Platform, often called the Old Red Sandstone continent.
Hercynian orogenic belt
The Hercynian, or Variscan, orogenic belt evolved during the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, from about 419 to 299 million years ago. The belt extends from Portugal and western Spain, southwestern Ireland, and southwestern England in the west through the Ardennes, France (Brittany, Massif Central, Vosges, and Corsica), Sardinia, and Germany (Odenwald, Black Forest, and Harz Mountains) to the Czech Republic (Bohemian Massif). The orogeny was formed by plate-tectonic processes that included seafloor spreading, continental drift, and the collision of plates. Remnants of the original ocean floor are preserved as ophiolites in the Harz mountain range in Germany and in the Lizard Peninsula of southwestern England. In the Devonian Period a continental margin ran along the north side of the belt in Devon and Cornwall (England) on which extensive sandstones derived from the continent were deposited. In the Carboniferous Period shallow-water limestones were laid down in the area of the Pennines of England on a shelf or carbonate bank; that formation passes southward into deeper-water shales of the Culm Trench of southwestern England, within which are found the pillow lavas (aggregates of ovoid masses, resembling pillows), gabbros, and serpentinites of the Lizard ophiolite. In Brittany there is an island arc with lavas and granites that resulted from subduction of the ocean floor. The main Hercynian suture zone of the collided plates extends from the south side of Brittany to the Massif Central.
Throughout much of Europe there is evidence of extensive thrusting, implying that there was appreciable thickening of the continental crust and the formation of a Tibetan-style plateau across the Hercynian orogeny. The thickening led to melting of the lower crust and the formation of large numbers of late Carboniferous granites, especially in the Massif Central. The plateau became overly thick and unstable, and that caused the formation of rifts that developed into coal-bearing basins—as in Silesia (Poland) and the Massif Central—in the late Carboniferous and Permian periods (i.e., between about 299 and 252 million years ago).
Indeed, the varied tectonic development of the Hercynian orogeny gave rise to widespread mineral deposits in many environments, which have been exploited in the economic development of many countries. Lead and zinc deposits occur in shelf carbonate sediments in Ireland and the Pennines of England; there are deposits of copper, lead, and zinc sulfides that formed in rifts in Silesia (Poland and eastern Germany) and at the Riotinto Mines in southwestern Spain; and important mineral deposits of tin, tungsten, and uranium are associated with crustal melt granites in Cornwall, the Massif Central, and Spain and Portugal.
Uralian orogenic belt
The Uralian orogenic belt, which forms the traditional eastern boundary of Europe, extends for about 2,175 miles (3,500 km) from the Aral Sea in the south to the northeasternmost tip of Severny Island, one of the two large islands that constitute most of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. It encompasses the Mughalzhar (Mugodzhar) Hills north of the Aral Sea, the Ural Mountains proper (which stretch for some 1,550 miles [2,500 km] from the bend of the Ural River in the south to the fringe of the Arctic in the north), the northern fingerlike extension of the Pay-Khoy Ridge, and Novaya Zemlya. The belt developed late in the Paleozoic as a result of collision between Asia and Europe. The earliest rifts in old Precambrian basement rocks began about 500 million years ago, and those developed into the floor of a new ocean. Island arcs formed in the later Silurian Period, and countless ophiolitic slabs of ocean floor were thrust onto the continental margins. In Devonian times a considerable amount of thrusting and metamorphism occurred, and the final parts of the ocean floor were subducted; the result of that activity was that in the Permian Period there was a final collision between the continents of Europe and Asia that gave rise to the Uralian orogenic belt.
In the Permian Period there was widespread deposition of limestones followed by red sandstones, which were derived by erosion of the mountains. The Ural Mountains also are rich in mineral deposits—especially chromite, platinum, nickel, copper, and gold—which are associated with the major ophiolitic slabs of ocean floor distributed along the chain.
Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras
During the Mesozoic Era the Tethys Sea evolved in what is now southern Europe, and during the Cenozoic Era that ocean was destroyed by subduction as many small plates collided. Those events gave rise to the present-day tectonic mosaic that extends eastward from the Atlas Mountains of North Africa, the Baetic Cordillera of southern Spain, and the Pyrenees via the Alps of maritime France, Switzerland, and Austria to the Carpathians, the Apennines, the Dinaric Alps, the Balkan Mountains, and the Taurus and Pontic mountains of Turkey and finally to the Caucasus. Within those belts also must be included the Pannonian Basin of southeastern Europe and the Algerian (or Balearic), Alborán, Tyrrhenian, and Adriatic basins of the Mediterranean Sea. The main cause of the Alpine orogeny during the Cenozoic was the northward compression of Africa into Europe.
The first rifting of the older supercontinent, Pangea, began in the Triassic Period (i.e., about 252 to 201 million years ago). During that time salt and evaporites were deposited in lakes in rift valleys. By 220 million years ago, in the Late Triassic, the continental margins of the new, narrow Tethys Sea were commonly covered by shallow water over fossiliferous carbonate shelf sediments. During the Jurassic Period (about 201 to 145 million years ago) those carbonate shelves began to fragment, and in the Cretaceous Period (about 145 to 66 million years ago) the ocean floor was subducted in many places. That gave rise to volcanic island arcs, such as those of present-day Indonesia, and slabs of the Tethys ocean floor were thrust as ophiolites onto the continental margins. Extensive remnants of those ophiolites can be seen today, especially in the northern Apennines and in the Balkans, Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus.
Collisions between many of the continental microplates took place in the Eocene and Oligocene epochs (about 56 to 23 million years ago). For example, the Iberian Peninsula rotated to give rise to the Pyrenees, the Italian Peninsula drove northward and compressed into Europe, causing the growth of the Swiss-Austrian Alps, and Anatolia moved westward and gave rise to the Aegean arc and the mountains of Greece. It is interesting to consider that it was the opening of the Red Sea that caused the Arabian Peninsula to slide northward along the fault defined by the Dead Sea and the Jordan Valley and in so doing to form at its front the Zagros Mountains of Iran, which in turn pushed Anatolia westward and caused the deformation in Greece. That scenario illustrates the interlinking and interdependence of all of those movements and structures in Europe with those outside the continent.
In the Miocene Epoch (i.e., about 23 to 5.3 million years ago) many of the early Mediterranean basins (e.g., Balearic, Tyrrhenian, Ionian, and Levantine) became isolated from the main Atlantic and Indo-Pacific oceans. In those basins were laid down huge deposits of salt and gypsum in evaporites up to more than a mile thick. Several other important mineral deposits in the European Alpine system also can be related to the stages of geologic evolution described above. Lead and zinc deposits occur in Triassic shelf limestones at Blei Hill in western Germany. Chromite ores are found in the ophiolites of the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey. Copper ores formed in pillow-bearing basaltic lavas of the Tethyan ocean floor; copper mines have been worked since antiquity in Cyprus, which lent its name to the element. The Tethys, however, was a relatively narrow ocean, and thus its limited subduction was not able to give rise, for example, to many granites and volcanic rocks, which might have contained useful mineral deposits.
Active seismic disturbances expressed as earthquakes are a reflection of the continuing compression between several of the European microplates. They are common in the Atlas Mountains, the island arc of the south Aegean, Greece, the island arc of the Tyrrhenian Sea in southern Italy, Turkey, and the Caucasus Mountains.
North European and Russian platforms
The approximately triangular area between the Caledonian orogeny in the west, the Hercynian orogeny and the Alps in the south, and the Urals in the east includes the Russian and North European platforms, as well as the North Sea. (That sea is a subsided fragment of the continental margin of Europe that was flooded with water from the melted glaciers of the last ice age.) Within that area the sedimentary rocks formed since the beginning of the Paleozoic are either undeformed or only weakly deformed, and thus that area contrasts with the surrounding orogenic belts described above, where such sediments are strongly deformed. Therefore, throughout much of the extensive Russian Platform the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and Cenozoic sediments have escaped the effects of the surrounding orogenies, and they are almost as horizontal as when they were laid down. Farther west, in the portion of the North European Platform that includes southeastern England and northern France, Mesozoic and early Cenozoic sediments have been weakly deformed into anticlines (arches of stratified rock) and synclines (troughs of stratified rock) by the Cenozoic deformation of the Alpine orogenic belt to the south. The deformation took place at a shallow level of the crust, and the sediments are still unmetamorphosed. For those reasons, the best place to find beautifully preserved Phanerozoic fossils is in the central triangular area of Europe. Moreover, under the North Sea there are gas reserves in Permian and Triassic sediments, and there are major oil reservoirs in Jurassic sediments.
Cenozoic igneous provinces
From about 60 to 50 million years ago there were important igneous extrusions and intrusions in northwestern Britain. In Northern Ireland and northwestern Scotland, basaltic lava flows (e.g., in the Giant’s Causeway and the northern part of the isle of Skye) are associated with northwest–southeast-trending basaltic dikes and many plutonic (igneous rock formed deep within the crust) complexes, which are probably the roots of volcanoes. The dikes extend southeastward across northern England and continue under the North Sea. Related lavas occur in the Faroe Islands. Those igneous rocks formed in the faulted and thinned continental margin of northwestern Europe contemporaneously with the rifting and seafloor spreading that gave rise to the Atlantic Ocean.
Iceland
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge plate boundary, separating the North American and the Eurasian plates, extends through the centre of Iceland. Along that ridge the Atlantic Ocean is still growing, and on Iceland that activity is expressed as major rifts, volcanoes, and steam geysers. The entire island is made of lavas, the oldest of which, on the northwestern coast, came from eruptions about 16 million years ago. Iceland thus preserves a unique record of the last stages of development of one of the world’s major accreting plate boundaries, most of which is elsewhere submarine.
Pleistocene glaciation
The Pleistocene Epoch occupies the Quaternary Period (i.e., the past 2.6 million years), with the exception of the past 11,700 years, which are called the Holocene Epoch. Although the precise causes of the ice ages that mark the Pleistocene are controversial, it is known that prior to that succession of glacial stages northern Europe had risen to a much higher elevation than now and that ice formed to great depths there, as in the rest of the Atlantic landmass and the Alpine areas. The Pleistocene was punctuated by warm interglacial periods separating glacial advances; during its latter part, humans occupied niches in the more southerly parts of the continent.
Glaciers are the most powerful engines provided by nature for the transport—by plucking or quarrying—of large masses of rock, and certainly the European glaciers transformed the physique both of their source areas and of the lands to which they moved. Many physical forms of northern and Alpine Europe resulted from glacial erosion, supplemented by weathering, and the surfaces of areas where the glaciers eventually withered away consisted of masses of transported material. Southern Scandinavia, southern Finland, the Swiss Plateau, and the North European Plain were thickly plastered with a variety of forms, including boulder-studded clay, gravels, sands, and the windblown deposits known as loess. New drainage patterns were formed as well. The melting of so much ice raised the level of the oceans by an estimated 320 feet (98 metres) or more, while former ice-clad lands, including the North Sea area, began to rise isostatically (see isostasy). It was not until quite late in the Holocene that the northern seas of Europe—the Irish, North, and Baltic—took, by stages, their present shape.
Modern geologic framework
Although the exposed rocks of Europe are increasingly obscured by the works of humans, and while detailed understanding of rock patterns presents challenges even to the expert, the major formations of the continent are clear. In the north lie wide areas of worn-down ancient rocks, stripped of soil by the glaciers but compensated in some measure by the coastal plains created by uplift. In contrast, southern Europe, although incorporating such relicts as massifs of Paleozoic rocks, is essentially a youthful world, not yet fully fashioned, as evidenced by continuing seismic disturbances. Eastern Europe, based on the vast Russian Platform, is a stable world still young in surface, since the floor of its shield rocks is deeply concealed beneath Mesozoic and Cenozoic deposits, above which glacial material covers the northern half and loess deposits enrich the south. Although in scale that platform is a continental area, river development facilitates access to inland seas in both the north and the south. Ancient rocks, lying near the surface, offer mineral wealth, and the former Volga-Ural seas have left a residue of petroleum and mineral salts. For the rest, western and central Europe show great diversity of landforms and landscape as well as varied soil and mineral resources. Alpine ranges in the south and southeast combine high altitude and relief with scenic attractions and—more importantly—with high precipitation and water dispersion. Highland areas, remnants of faulted Hercynian belts surrounded by younger strata, provide another type of wooded landscape, with their contained coalfields. Iceland has the youngest landscape of Europe, with its spectacular semi-active volcanoes, high waterfalls, extensive glaciers, and steam geysers. Lastly, lowlands, of great human value, recall their varied origins—former sea and lake basins, lowlands of glacial deposition, parts of eroded synclinal structures, and alluvial and marine plains won from the sea by isostasy or, as exemplified by the Dutch polders, by the work of humans.
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