This seaway separated the peri-Gondwanan
microcontinent of Avalonia (see inset on Fig.
Torsvik and his colleagues say that if their theory pans out, there could be a lot more
microcontinents hidden deep beneath the ocean.
(1992) in maintaining that Avalonia was part of Gondwana throughout this time interval until the Early Ordovician, whereas Landing and co-workers maintain that Avalonia was a separate
microcontinent at different paleolatitudes during the late Neoproterozoic and Cambrian.
However, the inevitable arrival of
microcontinents and/or oceanic plateaux at the trench may induce temporary compression, in which the rheologically softened crust undergoes thickening driving the P-T-t path to higher pressures (into a CCW path).
New England is composed of tectonic blocks,
microcontinents, and/or terranes accreted to eastern Laurentia primarily during the Silurian-Devonian Salinic, Acadian, and Neoacadian orogenies, and the Pennsylvanian-Permian Alleghanian orogeny (O'Hara and Gromet 1985; Goldstein 1989; Skehan and Rast 1990; Wintsch et al.
(2008): Inversion of moment tensor focal mechanisms for active stresses around the
microcontinent Iberia: Tectonic implications.
1.88 Ga magmatism in the Cape Smith belt and Labrador Trough has been linked to rifting and possible separation of a
microcontinent (St-Onge et al., 2000).
1B) formed due to the oblique convergence and collision between the
microcontinent Iberia and Eurasia from Late Cretaceous until Early Miocene times (Dewey et al., 1989; Srivastava et al., 1990; Munoz, 1992; Jabaloy et al., 2002; Andeweg, 2002).
Accretion of the Dashwoods
microcontinent to Laurentia produced the Taconic Orogeny (ca.
To the southwest of the Lapland-Savo Orogenic Belt and the Keitele
microcontinent, 1.90-1.88 Ga dated latitudinally extending Fennian orogenic suites form the Tampere, Mine, and Uusimaa volcanic-sedimentary belts of island arc origin in southern Finland (Korja et al.
Subsequently, the rifting of the arc from the continental margin and its northward drifting is considered coeval with that of the Avalonia
microcontinent (Gomez Barreiro et al., 2007; Murphy and Gutierrez Alonso, 2008).
Precambrian-Cambrian boundary interval deposition and the marginal platform of the Avalon
microcontinent. Journal of Geodynamics, 37, pp.
