Greywacke zone

The Greywacke Zone (or Grauwackenzone in the original German) is a band of Paleozoic metamorphic rocks, dominated by units of metamorphosed sedimentary rock, that forms an east-west band through the Austrian Alps.

Stratigraphically, the Greywacke Zone can be up to 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) thick and it is built up from several individual nappes.

The zone is part of the Austroalpine nappe system and has a generally northward dip. It crops out between the Mesozoic rocks of the Northern Calcareous Alps and the Austroalpine and Penninic basement rocks of the Central Eastern Alps. The southern contact, with the basement rocks of the Austroalpine and Penninic nappes is a steeply dipping fault. The northern contact, with the Northern Calcareous Alps, is more complicated, it has rocks typical of the Greywacke Zone intercalated with those typical of the Northern Calcareous Alps and has been interpreted as a disrupted unconformable contact.

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