The upper plateau of the East European Plain

Abstract

The upper plateaus of various elevated areas outside the limits of the Late Pleistocene ice sheet appear to possess some properties in common, which permit to consider them as a historic-genetic unity. They formed as a result of two phases of semiarid-semihumid pediplanation. In the first stage (the end of the Miocene - the early Pliocene) the upper plateau was modeled, in the second phase (Eopleistocene) - the delimiting scarp was formed and the lower plateau surface developed. Posterior tectonic activities raised considerably the upper plateau surface near the platform - orogens boundary and brought about local distortions of the surface in various regions.