Visages du continent africain

This booklet draws upon recent scientific documents resulting from the work of many researchers and doctoral students. They were produced in the context of national and international scientific programs and were initially written for specialists.

The text and the comments have been written so as to be as educational as possible. The purpose of this publication is to present a non-exhaustive review of knowledge concerning the geology of Africa which represents a unique and remarkable laboratory for the study of long-term relationships between external processes and the internal geodynamics. This document is organized in two parts. The first section presents a simple summary of the data available at the continental scale. The second part looks at some examples of particularly remarkable African geological features.

Contents:

I. Geological overview of the African continent: topography, current climates, past climates, major lithological units, sedimentary basins, margins, basement, Proterozoic basements, volcanism, deep structure, lithospheric structure, active deformation, formation of the supercontinent Rodinia (1.1 Ga), Rodinia to Pangaea (280 Ma), from the supercontinent Pangaea to current-day Africa.

II. Some of Africa's remarkable geological features: The East-African Rift system, the Bushveld magmatic complex (South Africa), the geology of the Maghreb, the Archean in South Africa, the Cameroon Line, and Africa the Craddle of Mandkind.