The Alice Springs Orogeny was a major intraplate tectonic (mountain building) episode in central Australia responsible for the formation of a series of large mountain ranges. The deformation associated with the Alice Spring Orogeny caused the vertically-tilted sandstone layers of the iconic Uluru/Ayers Rock. Duration The Alice Springs Orogeny was a long lived event, beginning approximately 450 million years ago and concluding about 300 million years ago, and it involved less than 100 km of distributed shortening. Extent The Alice Springs orogeny was centred in an area that had previously been a marine sedimentary basin, and involved the thrusting up of the underlying metamorphic and igneous rocks of Proterozoic age. The Alice Springs Orogeny had its beginnings in the Late Ordovician, continuing during the Silurian and Devonian, and by the Carboniferous the folding of the sedimentary deposits of the central Australian basins had produced the mountainous terrain of the MacDonnell Ranges area. Today we see only the eroded remnants of these former mountains in the MacDonnell Ranges and other ranges throughout much of central Australia. Prior to the Alice Springs Orogeny the Amadeus, Georgina, Wiso and Ngalia sedimentary basins were adjoining. The Alice Springs Orogeny disentombed the Arunta Inlier during mainly south-directed thrusting. Sediment was eroded off the rising mountain belt to result in the deposition of thick foreland sediments which became incorporated into the remaining relics of the former sedimentary basin, becoming the Amadeus, Georgina and Ngalia basins that are preserved today. General tectonics Two major crustal blocks dominate Central Australia: the Palaeoproterozoic to Mesoproterozoic Arunta Block and the Mesoproterozoic Musgrave Block. The blocks now separate the Officer, Amadeus, Ngalia and Georgina Basins. Central Australia has experienced two intraplate orogenic events involving significant north-south shortening: the late Neoproterozoic to early Cambrian Petermann Orogeny and the Devonian to Carboniferous Alice Springs Orogeny. The pattern of fault reactivation during these events is similar to the pattern of subsidence in the overlying basin. During the Alice Springs Orogeny, reactivation occurred along the most deeply buried faults, even in instances where those faults had remained inactive during the earlier Petermann Orogeny. The major Petermann-aged structures that were not buried during renewed subsidence were inactive during the Alice Springs Orogeny. The record of reactivation tells us that the presence of pre-existing faults is insufficient to localise deformation. The correspondence between the distribution of basement fault reactivation and subsidence patterns during the Petermann and Alice