page_title: Geology of Germany
section_title: Basement
hierarchical_section_title: Geology of Germany / Geological levels / Basement
caption_attribution_description: Wurmberg-Granitsteinbruch
context_page_description: The geology of Germany is heavily influenced by several phases of orogeny in the Paleozoic and the Cenozoic, by sedimentation in shelf seas and epicontinental seas and on plains in the Permian and Mesozoic as well as by the Quaternary glaciations.
context_section_description: The basement (German: Grundgebirgsstockwerk) consists of folded rocks, some of which are metamorphic rocks, mostly of marine-sedimentary and submarine-volcanic origin, intruded by granitoid plutons. Most of these rocks are of late Carboniferous age or older. Folding and metamorphism of these sedimentary and volcanic rocks, and the emplacement of the granitoids, occurred mainly in two Paleozoic orogenies: the Caledonian Orogeny in the Late Ordovician and the Variscan Orogeny in the early Carboniferous. In the oldest folded Variscan rocks, evidence exists of an older orogeny, the Cadomian Orogeny, which occurred before the accretion of the crustal blocks of Proto-Europe (Baltica) (German: Ur-Europa). 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 subsequent to the Cadomian Orogeny. A sample of this paragneiss contains a detrital zircon grain, whose core crystallised from a magma during the Archean eon, before about 3.48 billion years ago.
  Whereas the Caledonian folded basement lies a few thousand metres below the surface of the Central European Depression, the Variscan basement or Variscides (German: Varistikum) outcrops in the Central European Blocks area, occurring extensively in several large highland areas and also sparsely in some lowland areas in the form of basement uplifts. A distinction is made here between rock complexes, commonly referred to as "slate belts" (German: Schiefergebirge) made of unmetamorphosed or weakly metamorphosed rocks (slate, chert, sandstone, limestone, altered basalt, phyllite and  quartzite) which are intruded only to a small extent by granitoids, and rock complexes commonly referred to as crystalline, comprising weakly to highly metamorphosed rocks (phyllite, quartzite, marble, amphibolite, serpentinite, schist, gneiss, granulite and eclogite) which are extensively intruded by granitoids. The slate belt rock units were folded at a shallow depth at relatively low temperatures, whereas the metamorphic crystalline areas sank much deeper during the Variscan Orogeny, and were subjected to high pressures and, in some places, very high temperatures which caused partial melting of the rocks. The geochemical signature of the Variscan granitoids suggests that their magma was produced by the partial melting of deeply-buried sedimentary rocks. Outcropping slate belts are found mainly in the Rhenish Massif, the Harz and the Thuringian-Franconian-Vogtland Slate Mountains. Outcropping crystalline areas are found mainly in the Black Forest, the western Odenwald, Vorspessart, the Ore Mountains, the Fichtel Mountains, the Palatinate Forest and the Bavarian Forest.
caption: Quarry in the Brocken granite pluton on Wurmberg in the Upper Harz Mountains, parts of which are of early Permian (Asselian) age, one of the youngest rock bodies of the Variscan basement
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