Alpine orogeny building began in the Paleocene to Eocene. The process continues currently in some of the Alpide mountain ranges. The Alpine orogeny is considered one of the three major phases of orogeny in Europe that define the geology of that continent, along with the Caledonian orogeny that formed the Old Red Sandstone Continent when the continents Baltica and Laurentia collided in the early Paleozoic, and the Hercynian or Variscan orogeny that formed Pangaea when Gondwana and the Old Red Sandstone Continent collided in the middle to late Paleozoic. Alpine orogeny The Alpine orogeny or Alpide orogeny is an orogenic phase in
Grenville orogeny here. Ages are approximated from the magmatic activity associated with the individual cycles of the orogeny. The gaps in the ages of the compression cycles and isotope analysis of hornblende, biotite, and potassium feldspar suggest that extension was occurring when compression had momentarily ceased. Rivers' 2008 paper has now examined the timing of the different periods of the orogeny and reconstructed the timeline based on the spatial and temporal metamorphism of the rocks present. According to this newer version of the timeline which is a composite of Rivers 1997 and Gower and Krogh 2002, the Elzevirian orogeny occurs from 1240