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In the western Mediterranean, the relative motions of the Eurasian and African plates produce a combination of lateral and compressive forces, concentrated in a zone known as the Azores–Gibraltar Fault Zone. Along its northeast margin, the African plate is bounded by the Red Sea Rift where the Arabian plate is moving away from the African plate.
The geology of Europe is varied and complex, and gives rise to the wide variety of landscapes found across the continent, from the Scottish Highlands to the rolling plains of Hungary. Europe's most significant feature is the dichotomy between highland and mountainous Southern Europe and a vast, partially underwater, northern plain ranging from ...
The divergent movement of the European and African plates was relatively short-lived. When the Atlantic Ocean formed between Africa and South America (about 100 Ma) Africa began moving northeast. As a result of this process, the soft layers of ocean sediment in the Alpine Tethys Oceans were compressed and folded as they were slowly thrust ...
These plates comprise the bulk of the continents and the Pacific Ocean. For purposes of this list, a major plate is any plate with an area greater than 20 million km 2 (7.7 million sq mi) African plate – Tectonic plate underlying Africa – 61,300,000 km 2 (23,700,000 sq mi)
The geology of Sicily (a large island located at Italy's southwestern end) records the collision of the Eurasian and the African plates during westward-dipping subduction of the African slab since late Oligocene. [1] [2] Major tectonic units are the Hyblean foreland, the Gela foredeep, the Apenninic-Maghrebian orogen, and the Calabrian Arc.
Forming the Atlantic segment of the boundary between the African and Eurasian plates, the AGFZ is largely dominated by compressional forces between these converging (3.8 to 5.6 mm/a (0.15 to 0.22 in/year)) plates, but it is subject to a dynamic tectonic regime that also involves extension and transform faulting.
The Alpine orogeny is caused by the continents Africa, Arabia and India and the small Cimmerian Plate colliding (from the south) with Eurasia in the north. Convergent movements between the tectonic plates (the African Plate, the Arabian Plate and the Indian Plate from the south, the Eurasian Plate and the Anatolian Sub-Plate from the north, and many smaller plates and microplates) had already ...
The Mediterranean Sea, between Africa and Europe The Atlantic Ocean around the plate boundaries (text is in Finnish). The African and European mainlands are non-contiguous, and the delineation between these continents is thus merely a question of which islands are to be associated with which continent.