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Gondwanaland: Disruption of a Supercontinent

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Abstract

By the end of the Palaeozoic era, orogenic activity in the interior parts of Gondwanaland had died away, leaving the supercontinent as a vast cratonic mass bordered by still active mobile belts (Fig. 8.1). To the west and south, marginal belts extending from the western margin of South America through west Antarctica to eastern Australasia formed part of what was to become the Circum-Pacific orogenic system (Chapters 10, 11). To the north and east, the belts of the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic system skirted Africa, Arabia and India (Chapter 7). The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the history of the cratonic regions of Gondwanaland from the onset of the late Palaeozoic glaciation to the present day. The marginal mobile belts will be referred to only where their evolution is reflected by events within the cratonic regions.

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© 1975 The Estate of the late H. H. Read and Janet Watson

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Read, H.H., Watson, J. (1975). Gondwanaland: Disruption of a Supercontinent. In: Introduction to Geology. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15613-9_8

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