Dinaric Alps

The Dinaric Alps or Dinarides form a mountain chain in Southern Europe, spanning areas of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania and Montenegro.

They extend for 645 kilometres (401 mi) along the coast of the Adriatic Sea (northwest-southeast), from the Julian Alps in the northwest down to the Šar-Korab massif, where the mountain direction changes to north-south. The highest mountain of the Dinaric Alps is Mount Prokletije, located on the border of eastern Montenegro and northern Albania, with the peak called "Lake Crest" at 2,692 metres (8,832 ft).

The Dinaric Alps are the fifth most rugged and extensively mountainous area of Europe after the Caucasus Mountains, Alps, Pyrenees and Scandinavian Mountains. They are formed largely of secondary and tertiary sedimentary rocks of dolomite, limestone, sand and conglomerates formed by seas and lakes that had once covered the area.

During the Alpine earth movements that occurred 50–100 million years ago, immense lateral pressures folded and overthrust the rocks in a great arc around the old rigid block of the northeast. The Dinaric Alps were thrown up in more or less parallel ranges, stretching like necklaces from the Julian Alps as far as the areas of northern Albania and Kosovo, where the mountainous terrain subsides to make way for the waters of Drin and the fields of Kosovo. The Šar and Korab mountains then rise and the mountainous terrain continues southwards to the Pindus of Greece and the mountains of the Peloponnese and Crete, Rhodes to the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey.