Permo-Carboniferous magmatism and rifting in Europe: introduction

An extensive rift system developed within the northern foreland of the Variscan orogenic belt during Late Carboniferous-Early Permian times, post-dating the Devonian-Early Carbo-niferous accretion of various Neoproterozoic Gondwana-derived terranes on to the southern margin of Laurussia (Laurentia-Baltica; Fig. 1). Rifting was associated with widespread magma-tism and with a fundamental change, at the Westphalian-Stephanian boundary, in the regio-nal stress field affecting western and central Europe (Ziegler 1990; Ziegler & Cloetingh 2003). The change in regional stress patterns was coincident with the termination of orogenic activity in the Variscan fold belt, followed b