Geology and orogeny

Important geological concepts were established as naturalists began studying the rock formations of the Alps in the 18th century. In the mid-19th century the now defunct theory of geosynclines was used to explain the presence of “folded” mountain chains but by the mid-20th century the theory of plate tectonics became widely accepted.[30]

The geologic folding seen at the Arpanaz waterfall, shown here in a mid-18th-century drawing, was noted by 18th-century geologists.[31]

The formation of the Alps (the Alpine orogeny) was an episodic process that began about 300 million years ago.[32] In the Paleozoic Era the

Pangaean supercontinent consisted of a single tectonic plate; it broke into separate plates during the Mesozoic Era and the Tethys sea developed between Laurasia and Gondwana during the Jurassic Period.[30] The Tethys was later squeezed between colliding

plates causing the formation of mountain ranges called the Alpide belt, from Gibraltar through the Himalayas to Indonesia—a process that began at the end of the Mesozoic and continues into the present. The formation of the Alps was a segment of this

orogenic process,[30] caused by the collision between the African and the Eurasian plates[33] that began in the late Cretaceous Period.[34]