The study area comprises the Albera/Albères, Cap de Creus, Aspres, Canigó/Canigou (including the Puigmal, Conflent and Vallespir areas) and the Roc de Frausa/Roc de France massifs, and the La Salut Alpine thrust sheet in the eastern Pyrenees ( Fig. As a result, some palaeogeographic reconstructions and stratigraphic correlations with other basins of NW Gondwana are very hypothetical and the Pyrenees are often absent from most of the palaeogeographic reconstructions of this margin. However, this is hampered by several factors, such as the monotonous character of an important part of the succession, the lack of a well-preserved fossiliferous record, the complex macrostructure and the absence of a well-established stratigraphic framework.

As a result, the study area constitutes a key element to reconstruct the geodynamic evolution of Northwest Gondwana form Late Neoproterozoic to Variscan times. The succession records three different magmatic events (Cadomian, Ordovician and Variscan) and three deformational episodes (related to Sardic, Variscan and Alpine tectonics) together with a Variscan regional metamorphism. The lower part of this pre-Variscan succession is made up by a pre-Upper Ordovician succession, more than 3000m-thick, which crops out extensively in the Central and Eastern Pyrenees ( Fig. This pre-Variscan basement lies geographically disconnected from neighbouring outcrops that also belong to the eastern branch of the Ibero-Armorican Arc, such as the Catalan Coastal Range to the South, the Mouthoumet and Montagne Noire (southern French Massif Central) to the North, and Sardinia to the East. In the Pyrenees, rocks ranging in age from Late Neoproterozoic to Mississipian form an elongated strip in the backbone of the chain, unconformably overlain by Mesozoic and Cenozoic rocks ( Fig. The Pyrenees is an Alpine intracontinental fold and thrust belt that resulted from the convergence between the Iberian and European plates from Late Cretaceous to Oligocene times ( Roest and Srivastava, 1991 Muñoz, 1992). Keywords: LithostratigraphyLithostratigraphy,Chronostratigraph圜hronostratigraphy,PalaeogeographyPalaeogeography,CambrianCambrian,NW GondwanaNW Gondwana.

A stratigraphic comparison with neighbouring pre-Variscan outcrops from the Montagne Noire (southern French Massif Central) and Sardinia is related to i) the absence of Cadomian deformation close to the Ediacaran-Cambrian boundary interval ii) the presence of an episodic, Cadomian-related, acidic-dominant volcanism related to carbonate production punctuating the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition, similar to that recorded in the northern Montagne Noire and iii) the lack of Guzhangian (Cambrian Epoch 3) regressive shoal complexes present in the Montagne Noire and probably in Sardinia. The Ediacaran-Lower Ordovician successions exposed in the Eastern Pyrenees are updated and revised based on recent U-Pb zircon radiometric ages, intertonguing relationships of carbonate-dominated strata, and onlapping patterns marking the top of volcano-sedimentary complexes.

Framework canigo