Plissements et Dislocations de l'écorce terrestre en Grèce

Abstract

THE large questions raised by the author cannot be adequately discussed in a brief notice, so it must suffice to state his main facts and inferences, expressing doubts in passing. Since Jurassic times, successive earth-movements have affected Greece and the adjacent parts of Turkey. The foldings produced are distinguished by local names. The earliest, or Olympic, which is pre-Cretaceous, runs from N.W. to S.E. along the eastern coast and a chain of islands as far as Karpalho. The Pentelic, closing that period, is at right-angles to it and acts more especially on the TEgean area, its western coasts and the Morea. The Achaic, which occurred during the Eocene, more or less affects the whole region and even Crete, running W.N.W. to E.S.E. The Pindic, closing the Eocene, trends in a N.N.W.-S.S.E. direction and can be traced in the Pindus mountains, the country to the west and the Morea. Last is the Tenarus folding, which began late in the Pliocene and affected the whole of the Greek kingdom, running from N. to S. All are generally associated with outbursts of igneous rock- peridotite (serpentine) in the earlier, trachyte in the later. There are also three important sets of faults, on which, however, we cannot dwell. The Tenarus folding produces the most important effects, for the author regards it as only a part of a great series of disturbances which modified the earth's crust as far away as the American continent. These are mainly responsible for the Glacial epoch, and the advance or retreat of the ice and the variations in sea-level must fee attributed to earth-movements during it. Often, he insists, the sea, rather than the land, has altered its level, owing to changes in the form of the ocean basins. No doubt this is true, but we think the author presses it too far. He has also such faith in land-ice as to introduce the Scandinavian ice-sheet to the Shetland Isles, without caring to explain how it got across the deep valley which contours the southern and western coast of Norway. The earth-movements already mentioned were sometimes rapid, and the author connects the later of them with traditional deluges. The fabled Atlantis is Brazil, which had been converted into an insular tract by a rise of the sea. All this is certainly ingenious, though it may be unconvincing. He also gives us an explanation of the curious “bone beds” of Pikermi. Downward movements (connected with the second set of faults) submerged the lowlands. The animals fled for refuge to the hills, where they were killed en masse by mephitic vapours, which, fortunately for geologists, were exhaled in the nick of time, and their dead bodies were afterwards carried lower down by floods and mudstreams. Credat Judæus !

Plissements et Dislocations de l'écorce terrestre en Grèce

By Ph. Negris. Pp. 210; 2 maps. (Athens: C. Beck; Paris: C. Béranger, 1901.)