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Evidence for a Caledonian orogeny in Poland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

J. D. Johnston ,
J. A. Tait ,
G. J. H. Oliver  and
F. C. Murphy
J. D. Johnston
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
J. A. Tait
Affiliation:
Geology Department, St Andrews University, Scotland, KY169ST. (Now at the Institute für Geophysik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Theresienstr., 37–41, 80333 München, Germany)
G. J. H. Oliver
Affiliation:
Geology Department, St Andrews University, Scotland, KY169ST
F. C. Murphy
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, Jane Herdman Laboratories, PO Box 47, Liverpool, L69 3BX, UK. (Now with Pasminco Exploration, Level 2, The Atrium, 290 Burwood Road, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122, Australia)
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Abstract

The Lower Palaeozoic tectonic history of central and eastern Europe is poorly understood because of extensive Variscan and/or Alpine reworking. The trace of the Tornquist Sea, the SE arm of the Lower Palaeozoic Iapetus Ocean, extended from NE Britain to Asia Minor. The site of this ocean is constrained by the tectonostratigraphy and faunal provinciality of Lower Palaeozoic inliers in northern Czechoslovakia, and southern Poland. In this paper, the collage of contrasting tectonostratigraphic histories of terranes in the Lower Palaeozoic of Poland is reviewed. Fossil evidence demonstrates that the Holy Cross Mountains and the Krakovian Belt display Lower Ordovician and Lower Devonian angular unconformities. Faunal data suggest that the Tornquist Suture Zone must lie south of the Holy Cross and between Upper Silesia and the Barrandian of the Czech Republic. Between these areas, in the Sudeten Mountains, a continental scale sinistral mylonite zone (along the line of the Intra-Sudetic Fault) was periodically active between the Middle Ordovician and the Upper Triassic. Various dismembered ophiolite, island arc and batholith terranes from alongside the Intra-Sudetic Fault have Ordocivian and Silurian magmatic and metamorphic zircon isotopic and fossil ages. Thus the often stated view that deformation in the Sudetes is Variscan (i.e. post-Middle Devonian) must be called into question. It is proposed instead that the Tornquist Suture is located within the Sudeten mountains, and as in the Holy Cross Mountains, much of the observed deformation is post-Cambrian and pre-Gedinnian in age, i.e. Caledonian.

Keywords

Caledonianfaunal provincesIntra-Sudetic FaultmetamorphismSudeten MountainsterranesTornquist Sea closureU-Pb dates
Type
Research Article
Information
Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 85 , Issue 2 , 1994 , pp. 131 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1994

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