Sarmatian Craton

The Sarmatian Craton, or Sarmatia, also known as the Scythian Plateau, is the southern segment of the East European Craton, the ancient continental core also called Baltica. It contains Archaean rock between 2.8 and 3.7 billion years old, and during the Carboniferous it was rifted apart by the Dnieper-Donets Rift; the Donbas Fold Belt further divides it into the Ukrainian Massif, or shield, in the southwest and the Voronezh Massif in the northeast. It comprises several once-independent Archaean land masses, formed at different times and separated by a series of orogenic belts dated between about 2.2 and 2.1 billion years old.