A balanced section across the Pyrenean Orogenic Belt

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Abstract
Evolutionary models that have been proposed for the Pyrenean orogenic belt involve gravitational gliding of major thrust sheets to both the north and south of an uplifted central Axial Zone. It has been suggested by previous workers that uplift is a result of Alpine compression, or long lived strike slip movement on the North Pyrenean Fault. We critically assess these models and propose a new model based on the generation of a thin‐skinned, linked thrust system, due to Alpine collision of Iberia and Europe. Pyrenean Alpine tectonics is dominated by southward thrusting on a major sole fault dipping north at approximately 6° within Hercynian basement. Northerly directed thrusts of the North Pyrenean Zone and Northern Folded Foreland are backthrusts from this sole fault. A total orogenic shortening of 106 km in the central Pyrenees was achieved between the Palaeocene and Oligocene at a time‐averaged rate of 0.62 cm yr−1. A thin‐ skinned model requires that the North Pyrenean Fault is truncated by both northward and southward moving thrusts and occurs in the footwall of the sole fault some 60km north of its present surface trace.

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