At this stage, as early as 30 MYA in the Oligocene, the mainland of the Balkans had been formed by successive waves of subduction of the African Plate under the Eurasian, called “thrusts” from their thrusting of the Eurasian Plate to the NE. The various forearcs, or “thrust sheets,” created by this thrusting had moved to the north and had docked against the preceding, closing the ancient seas between them. Each forearc was a complex of folds, or “nappes,” raised by compression (or “shortening of the crust”), which had a tendency to fall over, creating tilted layers exposed later in highlands. The general hypothesis is that throughout these successive subductions there was only one subduction zone acting continuously to convey (as on a conveyor belt) and emplace (obduct) microcontinents broken from the African slab. Between each microcontinent was a local ocean, which was subducted and closed in turn: in the Cenozoic the Vardar, subducted; the Pindos, subducted; and the eastern Mediterranean, still being suducted. Between the Vardar and the Pindos was the Pelagian microcontinent; between the Pindos and the Mediterranean was the Apulian (or Adriatic) microcontinent, with subducted for the two, amounting to a closure of between Africa and Eurasia. Individual subductions thus varied between Oceanic and Continental, the current being Oceanic. This Hellenic orogeny to this point was part of the Alpine orogeny. The newly formed Alps connected to the Dinaric Alps, which were continuous with a chain called the Outer Hellenides, the last to form. Each former forearc was its own type of rock, or facies. Mainland Greece thus consists geologically of strips, or isopic zones (“same facies”), or “tectono-stratigraphic units” of distinct rock trending from NW to SE. The regime through the Oligocene, evidenced in the zone structure of Greece, was compressional. The subduction was in the Trench and its forearc was the edge of the overriding plate (the classical model). Subsequently, a superimposed extensional regime moved the subduction and the Trench back, but not necessarily at the same rate, nor did they always necessarily coincide. The former reverse faults were converted to normal, and many new extensional lineaments (tectonic features), such as pull-apart basins, appeared. The extensional regime The start line of the extension was a transform fault that has been called the Eastern Mediterranean North Transform (EMNT). It trended from the SW corner of Anatolia in a NW direction through the future center of the