*Generic Reference Type Author Year Title Secondary Title Volume Pages Publisher Secondary Author Notes Keywords Abstract Accession Number Book Migoń, P.;Waroszewski, J. 2023 The Central European Variscan Ranges. – In: Oliva, M., Nývlt, D. & Fernández-Fernández, J. M. (eds.), Periglacial landscapes of Europe Cham: Springer. pp. 225–251 1 1 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14895-8_10 The area named as the Central European Variscan ranges refers to the latitudinal belt of medium–high mountain terrains and intervening uplands that stretches between the River Rhine in the west and the Carpathians in the east (Fig. 1). Geologically, they are predominantly built of Proterozoic and Early Palaeozoic rocks of different origin and belonging to different terranes, which were later altered to form large metamor- phic complexes, amalgamated, and intruded by magmatic bodies of various size, mainly granites. As the final structural shape of the basement was acquired during the Variscan orogeny in the Devonian and the Carboniferous, the name “Variscan ranges” applies. However, the Variscan mountainous topography was subsequently eroded and the basement was partly, or completely, buried under younger sediments of Permian and Mesozoic ages. The contemporary gross topography originated in the Cenozoic through an interplay of differential uplift that occurred as a crustal response to the orogenic processes in the Alps and the Carpathians, and rock-controlled erosion (Ziegler and Dèzes, 2007). In this way, Variscan basement complexes were brought to the present-day altitudes and subject to the activity of periglacial processes, partic- ularly intense during cold stages of the Pleistocene, but still ongoing in the most elevated parts of the Variscan belt 35367