Pan-African orogeny

The Pan-African orogeny was a series of major Neoproterozoic orogenic events which related to the formation of the supercontinents Gondwana and Pannotia about 600 million years ago.

[3] The term Pan-African was coined by Kennedy 1964 for a tectono-thermal event at about 500 Ma when a series of mobile belts in Africa formed between much older African cratons.

At the time, other terms were used for similar orogenic events on other continents, i.e. Brasiliano in South America; Adelaidean in Australia; and Beardmore in Antarctica.

Later, when plate tectonics became generally accepted, the term Pan-African was extended to all of the supercontinent Gondwana.

Because the formation of Gondwana encompassed several continents and extended from the Neoproterozoic to the early Palaeozoic, Pan-African could no longer be considered a single orogeny,[4] but rather an orogenic cycle that included the opening and closing of several large oceans and the collisions of several continental blocks.