50 EUROPE/Timanides of Northern Russia Figure North western Russia: tectonic relationships M: Mitushev Bay, S: Sulmenev Bay, V: Vaigach Island highly metamorphosed sedimentary and igneous rocks From about 1650 Ma, the EEC was subject to repeated episodes of rifting, with the development of intracratonic basins (aulacogens) This rifting also controlled the structure of the eastern margin of the craton, with general subsidence leading to widespread deposition The latter continued until the onset of Timanian Orogeny in the Vendian Thereafter, uplift and deep erosion reduced most of the orogen to a peneplain which, early in the Palaeozoic, developed as a rifted margin to the craton-cored continent; the latter is generally referred to by palaeogeographers as Baltica Deposition along the eastern edge of Baltica continued, mostly in passive margin shelf facies, until the beginning of the Uralian Orogeny in the Late Palaeozoic The name Baltica is applied to both a palaeocontinent (with a core of the EEC) and a plate (i.e the continent with surrounding oceanic crust, reaching out to the plate boundaries) which existed in the Late Precambrian and Early Palaeozoic Characteristic endemic faunas defined its independence from other major continents in the Early Cambrian Baltica became a part of Laurussia during the mid-Palaeozoic Caledonian Orogeny Baltica came into existence as an independent plate as the result of Neoproterozoic rifting and fragmentation of the supercontinent Rodinia; exactly when is not well defined However, the eastern (Timanian) oceanic margin of Baltica was clearly established earlier in the Neoproterozoic than the north-western Baltoscandian margin The foreland folding and thrusting of the Timanide Orogen (Figure 2) extends for a length of at least 3000 km from the southern Urals (where it disappears beneath younger successions), northwards along the Uralian deformation front and then northwestwards via the Timan Range and northern Figure Timanide Complexes of the Urals and Timan Range edge of the Kola Peninsula to the Varanger Peninsula of northernmost Norway Here, the Timanide Orogen is truncated by the mid-Palaeozoic, Scandian thrust front of the Scandinavian Caledonides and the latter is inferred to continue northwards through the Barents Sea to the northern edge of the Eurasian Shelf (Figure 1) How far east the Timanides extended is not known Timanian deformed and metamorphosed rocks occur throughout the western flank of Ural Mountains and into southern and central Novaya Zemlya They dominate the Baltica margin complexes which underlie the main Palaeozoic allochthons of ocean-derived