Geology of Germany

The corresponding crustal provinces of Germany are thus geologically "middle-aged" and were accreted onto the East European Craton during the Paleozoic through plate tectonic processes.

The surface geology of Germany has evolved to its current configuration due to regional differences in the action and appearance of external and internal forces during the last c. 20 million years.

The latter three geological units form the north-western edge of the Bohemian Massif, which is the largest contiguous outcrop of basement in Central Europe.

The folded basement rocks originated in the Proterozoic, but even older relics of continental crust are found in a paragneiss of the Bavarian Forest, the protolith of which was probably deposited after the Cadomian Orogeny.

A sample of this paragneiss contains a detrital zircon grain, whose core crystallised from a magma about 3.84 billion years ago during the Archaean eon.

The transition level (German: Übergangsstockwerk) includes all unfolded sedimentary and volcanic rocks of late Carboniferous (Stephanian) to mid-Permian (Guadalupian) age.

"Transition level" refers, in part, to the stratigraphic position of these rocks: they are younger than the folded Variscides but older than the layers of the Mesozoic platform.

Due to the alternating layering of weathering/erosion-prone shales and more resistant sandstones and limestones, a cuesta landscape has formed there in the past several million years.

[3] The Cenozoic deposits in the Central European Blocks region consist of both siliciclastic rocks and limestones and both marine and continental sediments.

In contrast to the mostly acidic (SiO2-rich) volcanic rocks of the transition level, the Cenozoic formations are mostly intermediate to very SiO2-poor (trachyte, basalt, phonolite, tephrite, nephelinite and basanite).

In northern Germany, almost the entire surface geology is made of Cenozoic sediments (mostly Pleistocene and Holocene glacial or fluvioglacial deposits).

The route that the ice took can be reconstructed with the aid of rocks, the cobbles in the moraine sediments, because these can be matched with certain regions in Scandinavia (see Glacial erratic).

In southern Germany, with the exception of the Alpine foreland and the Upper Rhine Graben, there are rather thin Quaternary deposits and formations, geographically confined mostly to lower slopes and valleys where they occur as scree and stone runs or as fluvial gravels and sands.

The nappes outcropping in the German Alps invariably contain platform units of folded, unmetamorphosed sedimentary rocks, mainly of Mesozoic age, which were deposited almost exclusively in a marine environment.

[6][7] They represent the inner continental shelf on the southern edge of pre-Alpine Europe and they were not affected by the folding and overthrusting processes of the Alpine Orogeny until relatively late.

It comprises Cretaceous – lower Tertiary siliciclastic-carbonate turbiditic deepwater sediments (see Flysch), which represent a portion of the erosion debris forming the Alpine sedimentary wedge that in the further course of formation of the Alps was itself incorporated into the orogen and overthrust over a distance of about 100 km to the north onto the Helvetic units.

This carbonate rock association, whose outcrop (including the Austrian parts) runs in a 35 to 50-kilometre-wide strip from Vorarlberg as far as the Vienna Basin, is called the Northern Limestone Alps.

The Northern Limestone Alps represent a depositional environment that was probably located several hundred kilometres to the south, relative to the current position of the rocks.