THE GENERAL CRUSTAL FOLDING OF MOBILE BELTS

Abstract

It is known that the Earth’s crust is subjected to thickening and lithostructural transformations during collision. Terms such as “syncollision metamorphism (magmatism)” are widely used in the recent geological literature. However, what mechanism is responsible for crust thickening during collision-related compression and where is the energy stimulating lithostructural transformations of the crust localized? These are pressing and intensely debatable issues of recent geology. Previously, we demonstrated that they can be solved based on undulatory crustal deformations related to oriented horizontal compression recognized as general crustal folding (GCF).