Arequipa-Antofalla
South American geology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Arequipa-Antofalla is a basement unit underlying the central Andes in northwestern Argentina, western Bolivia, northern Chile and southern Peru. Geologically, it corresponds to a craton,[1] terrane[2] or block[2][3] of continental crust. Arequipa-Antofalla collided and amalgamated with the Amazonian craton about 1000 million years ago during the Sunsás orogeny.[3] As a terrane, Arequipa-Antofalla was ribbon-shaped during the Paleozoic, a time when it was bounded in the west by the Iapetus Ocean and in the east by the Puncoviscana Ocean.[2]
