Montalegre (district of Vila Real). The park includes an area of 702.90 km2, of which 52.75 km2 are public lands, 194.38 km2 are private property and the remaining 455.77 km2 are commons. Physical geography The park is a vast amphitheatre-shaped space sculpted during the Variscan orogeny by geological forces, wind and water, and extends from the Castro Laboreiro to the Mourela plateaus, encompassing the Serra da Peneda, Serra do Soajo, Serra Amarela and the Serra do Gerês. These form a barrier between the ocean plains to its west and the plateaus in the east. The highest peaks are Peneda (1340 m), Soajo (1430 m), Amarelo (1350 m), Gerês (1545 m) and Altar dos Cabrões (1,538 m) located on the border with Galicia, continuing into this territory as part of the Serra do Xurés. The granitic rocks that dominate this shield were deposited during the process of continental collision that brought together the lower Iberian peninsula with Europe, between 380 million and 275 million years; the oldest of them, at Amarela, date from 310 million years ago. The most extensive of the granitic rocks that occur within the park are the Peneda-Gerês pluton which is an exposed relief that became exposed around 290-296 Ma by the Gerês-Lovios fault. Sedimentary layers laid down between 435 and 408 Ma (Silurian epoch) were deformed and metamorphosed into schists, greywackes and quartzites (such as in the area of Castro Laboreiro). Also, dykes and sills formed from quartz and aplite-pegmatites were mineralized resulting in tin, tungsten, molybdenum and gold (which would become the focus of mining in the human era, at the now-closed mines of Carris and Borrageiro). Generally, the lithological structures can be divided into three layers: Gerês granite structures - includes Gerês, Paufito, Carris, Borrageiro and Tieiras, and is composed of special mineralogical and geochemical intrusions that occurred through third phase of Hercynian faults, caused by a differentiating of basic magmas. The terrain in these regions include a vigorous relief, a rounded granite petrography, such as in the Serra da Peneda; older granite structures - includes a very heterogeneous group of Mezio, Soajo, Serra Amarela, Linhoso, Parada, Tourém, Pedrada e Ermida, Germil, Sezelhe and Frades, with a texture and composition that quite variable, from the crustal fusion of various materials with surface contamination; sedimentary formations - includes sediments deposited in Silurian waters and metamorphosed during the Devonian period, as well as carbon and more