Over the last decades, the increasing amount of cross-disciplinary studies and use of high-resolution techniques have highlighted singular rather than common geological processes in orogens. In the meantime, significant progress has been made in reconsidering the dynamics of orogens as a succession of orogenic “phases”. Key orogenic phases include:

(1) oceanic subduction
(2) inversion of former rifted margins (i.e. early orogeny) leading to continental subduction
(3) mature continental collision
(4) post-orogenic evolution

Phanerozoic orogens seem to either omit or repeat one or several of these phases and can even stop prematurely resulting in a certain variability in mountain building processes. What controls these different genetic paths? Is the transition from one phase to the next marked by a critical event? How and where is it recorded? How far is the fate of an orogen controlled by its pre-convergence history (e.g. oceanic basin siz Coe and maturity, architecture of former rifted margins)? Combining investigations of orogenic phases with the role of pre-convergence histories may provide valuable insights into key physical processes of orogenic evolution.
This session invites contributions that describe, image and model orogen dynamics across the lifetime of an orogen with a focus on one or several orogenic phases and critical events. Contributions may be multi-disciplinary using natural laboratories (basins and basement records) as well as modeling and imaging experiments ranging from lithosphere to basin scales.