Plate tectonics, palaeoenvironments and limestone geomorphology in West‐Central Britain

The variety of active, exhumed, and buried limestone landforms of northern England, North Wales, and the Isle of Man arises in part from the way in which Dinantian (Lower Carboniferous) sedimentation was affected by a tilt‐block basement structure evolved during the closure of the Iapetus Ocean suture to the north, and partly to subsequent plate tectonic movements associated with the closure of the proto‐Tethys ocean, the opening of the Atlantic Ocean and the Alpine orogeny. Landforms created during the Dinantian now form important exhumed and buried landscape features. The Permian half‐graben structures of the eastern Irish Sea‐Cheshire‐Worcester Basins account for many of the contrasts between the upland karsts of the Pennines and the lowland karsts of coastal areas.