Geology of Northwest Africa

Northwest Africa comprises a vast territory, from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia to Mauritania, made up out of rocks which range in age from the Archaean (Early Precambrian) to the Quaternary. The book is the result of the author's extensive field studies in many parts of the covered area and a comprehensive compilation of previously published data. The author presents a description and an analysis of the various geological domains that this area consists of, ranging from the stable cratonic areas to the pericratonic zones in which major episodes of deformation occurred at the end of the Precambrian, to the Atlas mountains which were deformed together with their Paleozoic basement during the Mesozoic and Cainozoic. Further to the North, it comprises the Rif-Tell chain which borders the Mediterranean Sea and which is undergoing recent deformation. In the West, stable ancient basement passes into more recent successions and finally abuts upon the passive Atlantic margin. Each of the domains is described in detail; sedimentary, magmatic and metamorphic rocks are presented and their structural development is unravelled. Furthermore, the author aims at presenting a synthetic overview of the geodynamic evolution of Northwest Africa, emphasizing the sequence of orogenic events from Precambrian times to the most recent tectonic activity. Alain Pique is professor of structural geology at the Universite de Bretagne occidentale, Brest (France).