A Continent Revealed : The European Geotraverse, Structure and Dynamic Evolution

The continent of Europe has a complex geological history of successive tectonic events.

Over several thousand million years these have formed the present day configuration of major tectonic provinces.

A Continent Revealed unravels this history by presenting and interpreting the results of the European Geotraverse (EGT) - a unique study of the continent of Europe and the first comprehensive cross section of the continental lithosphere.

An illustrated book and an atlas of data have been assembled by key workers in the EGT project to make known the wealth of information yielded by the ten year project.

Seismic, gravity, magnetic, electrical, geothermal and other geophysical and geological data, presented as separate maps and as data files on CD-ROM, have revealed the nature of the deep interior of the continent and the variation in character from one tectonic province to another.

The integration of the results and interpretation of the different characters has given new insights into the mechanisms of continental evolution and Europe's geodynamics.

From this perspective it is evident that understanding geological processes demands a multidisciplinary approach and that all processes, be they sedimentary, metamorphic or igneous, on every scale, involve the whole lithosphere.