 The most distinguishable physiographic aspect of the East European Craton is the extensive 3-km and more-thick Riphean (middle to late Proterozoic) sedimentary cover over its 3000-km-wide platform area (East European Platform, EEP, also formerly known as the Russian Platform) .This is in sharp contrast to the exposed northwest portion of the Baltic Shield, and the Ukrainian Shield in the southwest.The lithospheric thickness also varies widely from 150–200 km in Ukraine to 120 km in southern Russia to over 250 km thick in the NE Baltic Shield, with extremely wide thickness fluctuations of the crustal layers.