The European lithosphere: an introduction

Europe provides on outstanding field laboratory for studying lithospheric processes through time: for tracing the results of plate movements from the present back into the early Precambrian. This book has been designed to focus on tectonic processes in the European lithosphere through these three billion years and how they may have changed during this time. Two things are particularly striking: the importance of plate tectonics far back through the Proterozoic into the Archaean, and the significance of tectonic inheritance, older structures and rheologies guiding, even defining, the younger evolution. Basement structure has a profound influence on subsequent basin evolution and the distribution of geo-resources. The economic importance of understanding these processes cannot be overestimated. Understanding the dynamics responsible for the construction of continental lithosphere requires integrated interpretation of geological, geophysical and geochemical observations. Hypotheses often benefit from testing by numerical and analogue modelling. In practice, one technology - multi-channel, near-vertical reflection profiling - has played a leading role in connecting surface observations to the deep crust and mantle structure. Combined with other geophysical methods, deep reflection profiling has guided the interpretation of the processes that created the The European part of the Eurasian continent, reaching from the Ural Mountains in the east to the Iberian Peninsula in the west and from the Mediterranean into the high Arctic, has a lithosphere that can readily be treated in two parts, east and west (Fig. 1). Most of eastern Europe is dominated by the old, cold East European Craton (EEC), partly covered by