Journal of the Virtual Explorer

After pioneering work by Charrier (1957) on metamorphism in northern Sardinia, in the last 35 years, several new, detailed papers have made great contributions to knowledge of the tectono-metamorphic evolution of Sardinia during Variscan orogeny (among others: Arthaud, 1970; Ricci, 1972; Di Simplicio et al., 1974; Miller et al., 1976; Ghezzo and Ricci, 1977; Conti et al., 1978; Carmignani et al., 1979, 1982a,b; Ghezzo et al., 1979, 1982; Franceschelli et al., 1982a,b; Tucci, 1983; Elter et al., 1986; Oggiano and Di Pisa, 1988; Franceschelli et al., 1989, 1990; Carosi et al., 1990; Carosi and Pertusati, 1990; Elter et al., 1990; Franceschelli et al., 1991; Franceschelli et al., 1992; Musumeci, 1992; Ricci, 1992; Carmignani et al., 1994; Eltrudis and Franceschelli, 1995; Eltrudis et al., 1995; Franceschelli et al., 1998; Elter et al., 1999; Carmignani et al., 2001; Cruciani et al., 2001; Franceschelli et al., 2002; Cortesogno et al., 2004; Di Vincenzo et al., 2004; Elter et al., 2004; Palmeri et al., 2004; Giacomini et al., 2005a). This paper attempts to carefully review all contributions on Variscan metamorphism in Sardinia and insert the complex and still highly debatable tectono-metamorphic evolution of the Corsica-Sardinia microplate into the general framework of the Variscan chain.