Mary Ford

The Pyrenean orogen: new insights into plate convergence

Over the last 10 years a number of major research projects have focused on the Pyrenean orogen and adjacent areas. These projects are providing new insights into many aspects of orogenesis. The Pyrenean orogen was created by the convergence of Iberia and Europe from Late Cretaceous to Oligocene. This mountain belt is often considered as a “typical” doubly vergent orogen. However, the orogen is remarkable in several ways. Continent-continent collision was not preceded by subduction of oceanic crust. Instead, subduction of the Iberian crust initiated during convergence. A narrow transtensive hyperextended rift was inverted in two phases, each with a distinct distribution of deformation both in the near and far fields. The rift was abnormally hot and, as convergence started very soon after the end of rifting, an important thermal inheritance impacted both orogen behaviour and foreland basin evolution. Because total convergence was low we can investigate earliest convergence, a phase that is usualy strongly overprinted in high convergence orogens.

Biography: After completing my BSc at the National University of Ireland, Galway I did my PhD at NUI Cork on the structure and stratigraphy of the Variscan foldbelt of SW Ireland, mapping a 70 km transect on a bike. I started to work on the Alpine foreland fold and thrust belt of SE France during a postdoc at Liverpool University with Trevor Elliott and his group. I then held a lectureship at Plymouth Polytechnic for 4 years before taking an Oberassistentin post with John Ramsey at the Geological Institute ETH Zurich. I continued to work principally on the western Alpine arc, focussing on arc dynamics, foreland basin evolution and tectonosedimentary interactions. In 1998 I took a professorship at the Nancy School of Geology, University of Lorraine, France where I remain today. My research projects include the the tectonosedimentary evolution of the Corinth rift, salt tectonics and dynamics of the Pyrenean orogen. I am principally a field structural geologist, mapping stratigraphy and structure on a local and regional scale and collaborating with many colleagues in multidisciplinary projects.