The Carpathians are the main mountain range in central-eastern Europe linking the Alps with the Balkans. Geologically, the range is a typical geosynclinal edifice whose main sedimentary, diastrophic, and magmatic features are inscribed in a well-defined evolutionary framework.

The Eastern Carpathians, second of the three (Northern, Eastern, and Southern) segments composing the Carpathian range, are almost entirely on Romanian territory and are characterized by an important bend, their north-south direction changing to east-west and conferring on the entire chain an arclike shape.

Following the definitions of some basic concepts of Alpine orogeny, the stratigraphic-lithologic sequences of the Eastern Carpathians are grouped into several geologic formations characteristically developed in each of the seven paleogeographic zones of the East Carpathian geosyncline. The sedimentologic features and the paleogeography of the Flysch and Molasse formations are of particular significance. Paleocurrent maps of the flysch series and other sedimentologic data identify the source areas supplying the East Carpathian trough with detritus. A reconstruction of the paleomorphology of the trough itself, as well as of the landmasses surrounding it, leads to the proposal of paleogeographic models of the Flysch basin and of the Molasse foredeep in both of which petroleum reservoirs re present.

The paleotectonic evolution of the Eastern Carpathians represents a complex fabric in which subsidence, distension, compression, and uplift are interwoven and on which magmatic processes are superimposed. Geosynclinal polarity controlled all geosynclinal-orogenic processes, so that the closer to the cratonic area they are, the younger they are.

Such an evolution and other facts are hardly compatible with the orogenic mechanisms conceived by the "New Global Tectonics" hypothesis. It is assumed that geosynclinal realms (at least the Tethys-Alpine belt) are not always associated with oceans and/or continental margins and that orogeny is not necessarily an effect of subduction and/or collision.

The relatively mild diastrophism which affected the East Carpathian geosyncline helped preserve many paleomorphologic features, so that paleogeographic reconstructions are less hypothetical than in many other Alpine areas. The time-space dynamics (polarity) of the sedimentary, diastrophic, and magmatic processes are expressed clearly. They could serve as a model for the more fragmented and obliterated parts of the Alpine orogenic belt.