Reply to Comment by M.F. Pereira, J.B. Silva and C. Gama on “Baltic provenance of top-Famennian siliciclastic material of the northern Rhenish Massif, Rhenohercynian zone of the Variscan orogen, by Koltonik et al., International Journal of Earth Sciences (2018) 107:2645–2669”

• DOI: 10.1007/s00531-019-01692-z
• Publication Date: 2019-03-26T06:03:47Z
• Authors: Katarzyna Kołtonik; Agnieszka Pisarzo...; Mariusz Paszkowski; Jiří Sláma; Ralph Thomas Becker; Marek Szczerba; Wojciech Krawczyński; Sven Hartenfels; Leszek Marynowski; Stanislaw Mazur; Wolfgang Franke
• Keywords: silicclastic rocks; 550; 13. Climate action; clastic rocks; earth sciences; 15. Life on land; 01 natural sciences; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

The authors of the Comment suggest that our geological overview map of the European Variscides is incorrect in the section showing SW Iberia (our Fig. 1a). However, our paper reports results of the provenance study from the northern Rhenish Massif, and does not attempt to discuss the architecture and tectonic evolution of the Appalachian-Variscan belt. The aim of Fig. 1 is to locate the study area in the geological context of the European Variscides and not to extrapolate the implications of our findings down to southern Portugal. The map is mostly based on Franke (2014) that is explicitly stated in the caption. Our results are neutral towards the hypothetical correlation between the Mid-German Crystalline High and the southern domains of the Ossa-Morena Zone that is shown on the map[…]