Geological Magazine; January 2008; v. 145; no. 1;
p. 153; DOI: 10.1017/S0016756807004074
© 2008 Cambridge University Press (CUP)
GEE, D. G. & STEPHENSON, R. A. (eds) 2006. European Lithosphere Dynamics.
Geological Society Memoir no. 32. vii + 662 pp. London, Bath: Geological Society of London. Price £70.00, US $126.00; GSL members’ price £35.00, US $63.00; AAPG/SEPM/ GSA/RAS/EFG/PESGB members’ price £42.00, US $76.00 (hard covers). ISBN 9781 86239 212 0.
R. W. England
Europrobe began as a project to produce a geo-transect in an E–W direction linking western Europe with eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and had its genesis in the early 1980s. The initial project would have resulted in a profile similar in scope to the N–S European Geotraverse (the EGT). With the end of the Cold War came increasing dialogue and collaboration between geoscientists from the east and west and Europrobe workshops became a vehicle for this. The original idea of a profile developed into a plethora of projects that in scope was far greater than originally envisaged. This volume might be regarded as the culmination of these efforts.
The Memoir is divided into four sections containing a number of multi-author papers. The first, introductory, section contains a group of papers with a very broad scope that look at the present structure and properties of Europe and the series of collision and rifting events that led to the present-day collage. The remaining sections contain 32 papers grouped into the major orogenic episodes by which eastern and western Europe were sutured together. These work back in time through ‘Alpine to Present’, ‘Mesozoic and Palaeozoic’ and then ‘Precambrian Europe’. The majority of the papers focus on specific aspects of crustal evolution, but also draw on data and interpretations from papers within this volume and other published work. The range of techniques applied is broad, covering the full range available to geoscientists in all disciplines. The geographic coverage, as would be expected from the projects incorporated into Europrobe as it evolved as a programme, is also broad: from the Iberian peninsular to the Urals and from Navoya Zemla to Tunisia and across to the Caucasus. The preface does illustrate the range of projects that formed Europrobe but the boundaries of these individual projects are not noticeable in the memoir. Instead many papers overlap and cross-reference each other providing a well-integrated picture of current knowledge, which is a credit to the authors and editors. A comprehensive index also makes cross-referencing topics easy. Each paper has its own reference list.
My only reservation about this Memoir is the title, which I would argue is misleading. This is not a book about ‘dynamics’. Very few of the papers really discuss the forces at work in the past and only one or two address the issue of current plate stresses and their relation to post-Alpine tectonics. Instead this is really a ‘Geological Evolution of Europe’ but it is none the worse for being that.
This is an excellent summary of the results of the Europrobe programme drawing together current and recent research, and I recommend it to anyone with an interest in the crustal evolution of Europe. It should also be on the shelves of every library as an up-to-date reference on European geology.
Copyright © 2009 by Cambridge University Press (CUP)
