Variscan orogeny rifted off the north Gondwana margin in early Ordovician. By the end of the Silurian and in Early Devonian times, Baltica and Laurentia drifted towards each other, closing the Iapetus Ocean between them. They collided in the Caledonian orogeny and formed the Caledonide mountains of North America, Greenland, the British Isles and Norway. Seafloor spreading to the south of Avalonia pushed the latter into north Laurentia and thrust up the northern Appalachian Mountains in the acadian phase of the Caledonian orogeny. Contemporaneously the Tornquist Sea between Avalonia and Baltica was entirely closed. Thus Avalonia formed the southern coast of the
Petermann Orogeny the Cambrian. Sediments are a mixture of fluvial conglomerates, sandstones, and siltstones. Several pull-apart structural grabens formed at flexures in the orogenic belt, forming the Levenger and Moorilyanna Grabens. The Petermann Orogeny is dominated by south-over-north movement on several large, anastomosing curved thrust faults. The prime thrust fault is the Woodroffe Thrust, which is a laminated pseudotachlyte-schist zone up to 300 metres thick. This has accommodated up to 42 kilometres of vertical movement at an angle of about 15 to 20 degrees. The structure of the Petermann Orogen within the Musgrave Block is considered to be a "flower-structure", which is