Late Cretaceous – Early Palaeogene inversion-related tectonic structures at the NE margin of the Bohemian Massif (SW Poland and northern Czechia)

Abstract

Abstract. A brief, regional-scale review of the Late Cretaceous – Early Palaeogene inversion-related tectonic structures affecting the Sudetes and their foreland at the NE margin of the Bohemian Massif is presented and complemented with results of new seismic studies. The Sudetes expose Variscan-deformed basement, partly overlain by post-orogenic Permo-Mesozoic cover, containing a wide spectrum of tectonic structures, both brittle and ductile, in the past in this area referred to as young Saxonian or Laramide. We have used newly reprocessed legacy seismics to study these structures at the two main post-Variscan structural units of the area, the North-Sudetic and Intra-Sudetic synclinoria, and discuss the results together with regionally-distributed examples coming from quarries and underground mines as well as those from the literature. The Late Cretaceous – Early Palaeogene tectonic structures in consecutively reviewed Sudetic tectonic units, from the north to south, typically include gentle to moderate buckle folds of detachment type or fault-related, high-angle reverse and normal faults, as well as low-angle thrusts – often rooted in the crystalline basement. The structures hitherto described as grabens, are frequently believed to be bounded by reverse faults (hence we use the term ‘reverse grabens’) and typically reveal strongly synclinal pattern of their sedimentary fill. The crystalline basement top, as imaged by seismic sections in the North Sudetic Synclinorium below the detachment-folded cover, is synformally down-warped with a wavelength of up to 30 km, whereas on the elevated areas, where the basement top is exposed at the surface, it is up-warped (i.e. tectonically buckled). The reviewed compressional structures typically show an orientation fitting the regionally-known Late Cretaceous – Early Palaeogene tectonic shortening direction of NE-SW to NNE-SSW The same applies to the regional joint pattern, typically comprising an orthogonal system of steep joints of c. NW-SE and NE-SW strikes. All the reviewed structures are considered as due to the Late Cretaceous – Early Palaeogene tectonic shortening episode, although some of the discussed faults with a strike-slip component of motion may have been modified, or even produced, by later, Late Cenozoic, tectonism.

Together but separate: decoupled Variscan (late Carboniferous) and Alpine (Late Cretaceous – Paleogene) inversion tectonics in NW Poland

“…The Polish Basin was inverted in the Late Cretaceous -Palaeogene (Dadlez et al, 1995Głuszyński and Aleksandrowski, 2021;Krzywiec, 2002bKrzywiec, , 2006bKrzywiec et al, 2009;Resak et al 2008). This was associated with widespread inversion of the European foreland triggered by the Alpine-Carpathian collision and Iberia-Europe convergence (cf.…”