The geological record of Europe extends back in time to about 3,500 million years, approximately 1,000 million years after the Earth was formed. Europe was the birthplace of geological sciences. The first writers who have contributed something of geological significance were the ancient Greek philosophers (Adams 1954), such as Thales of Miletus (c. 636-546 BC), Anaximander of Miletus (615-547 BC), Pythagoras of Samos (540-510 BC), Xenophanes of Colophon (540-510 BC), Herodotus of Halicarnassus (480-420? BC), Aristotle of Stagira (384-322 BC), Strabo (64 BC-23? AD) and many others. Modern geology begins with Georgius Agricola in Germany (1494-1555 AD), who was one of the most outstanding figures in the history of the geological sciences, not only of his own times, but of all time, and his rightfully called the “Forefather of Geology”. Other eminent pioneering figures are Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519 AD), Abbé Anton Lazzaro Moro (1687-1740 AD) and Antonio Vallisnieri (1661-1730 AD) in Italy, Conrad Gesner (1516-1565 AD) in Switzerland, Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686 AD) in Denmark, Abraham Gottlob Werner (1750-1817 AD) in Germany, Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848 AD) in Sweden, William Smith (1769-1839 AD), the father of English Geology, Charles Lyell (1797-1875 AD) and James Hutton (1726-1797 AD) in the United Kingdom, Georges Cuvier (1769-1832 AD) and Alexandre Brongniart (1770-1847 AD) in France, and Andreas Kordellas (1836-1909 AD) in Greece, working from the 15th to the late 19th centuries, to provide information on mineralogy, crystallography, palaeontology, stratigraphy and mineral resources. Hence, the continent’s stratigraphy and structure has been studied for almost 500 years. Initially, geology involved the examination and survey of surface rock exposures to prepare geological maps. More recently, understanding of the evolution of Europe’s continental crustal structure has been greatly enhanced by the interpretation of new types of geophysical and geochemical data. The present continent of Europe stretches from its submarine continental margin in the west to the Ural mountains in the east, and from the ancient and relatively tectonically stable rocks of the Fennoscandian Shield in the north, to the young, more tectonically and volcanically active zone, of the central and eastern Mediterranean in the south. The evolution of the continent took place as a result of lithospheric plate interactions, which are now relatively well understood. The outer region of the Earth, or lithosphere, includes the crust and the upper mantle, and is a rheologically more rigid layer lying above a more plastic layer of the upper mantle, known as the asthenosphere. The lithosphere is divided into several major tectonic plates that move relative to one another, and interact and deform, especially around their margins. Orogenesis, involving crustal thickening, deformation and metamorphism, is often followed by extensional collapse with widespread intrusion of highly evolved peraluminous granites. Plume activity is generally associated with continental break up, and there is considerable evidence of this following the splitting of the Earth’s most recent supercontinent–Pangaea, beginning during the Permo-Triassic times. At present, Europe forms the western part of the Eurasian Plate. In the Mediterranean region it abuts against the African Plate to the south which, combined with the broadly SE-directed ridge-push forces of the mid-Atlantic Ridge, and the beginning of an eastward Atlantic plate compression along Iberia, give a broadly NW-SE maximum horizontal crustal compressive stress throughout much of western and …