The Trans-European Suture Zone (TESZ), also known as the Tornquist Zone, is the crustal boundary between the Precambrian East European Craton and the

Phanerozoic The Phanerozoic Eon is the current geologic eon in the geologic time scale, and the one during which abundant animal and plant life has existed. It covers 538.8 million years to the present, and it began with the Cambrian Period, when anima ...

orogens of South-Western Europe. The zone runs from the North Sea to the Black Sea. The north-western part of the zone was created by the collision of

Avalonia Avalonia was a microcontinent in the Paleozoic era. Crustal fragments of this former microcontinent underlie south-west Great Britain, southern Ireland, and the eastern coast of North America. It is the source of many of the older rocks of Wester ...

and Baltica/ East European Craton in the Late Ordovician. The south-eastern part of the zone, now largely concealed by deep sedimentary basins, developed through

Variscan The Variscan or Hercynian orogeny was a geologic mountain-building event caused by Late Paleozoic continental collision between Euramerica (Laurussia) and Gondwana to form the supercontinent of Pangaea. Nomenclature The name ''Variscan'', comes f ...

and Alpine orogenic events. Various branches of the TESZ go under different names: * The Teisseyre-Tornquist Zone (TTZ) in Ukraine and Poland. * The Sorgenfrei-Tornquist Zone (STZ) through Scania (Sweden), Kattegat, and North Jutland (Denmark). * The Trans-European Fault (TEF), Thor-Tornquist Suture or Thor Suture through southern Denmark. The latter two branches (STZ and TEF) span a triangular area of numerous faults, called the Tornquist Fan.

History of Discovery

In 1893 the Polish geologist

Wawrzyniec Teisseyre Wawrzyniec Karol de Teisseyre (1860–1939) was a Polish geologist who is known for his work on the southern part of the Trans European Suture Zone and Galician and Romanian geology. Wawrzyniec Teisseyre was born in Cracow (Poland) of French anc ...

suggested the existence of a buried tectonic line close to the

Carpathian Mountains The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians () are a range of mountains forming an arc across Central Europe. Roughly long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Urals at and the Scandinavian Mountains at . The range stretches ...

. As part of his work on a Geological Atlas of Galicia he mapped the line from

Galicia Galicia may refer to: Geographic regions * Galicia (Spain), a region and autonomous community of northwestern Spain ** Gallaecia, a Roman province ** The post-Roman Kingdom of the Suebi, also called the Kingdom of Gallaecia ** The medieval King ...

in Ukraine to south-eastern Poland. In 1908 the German geologist Alexander Tornquist mapped the continuation of the zone from Poland to Scania in Sweden.

Tornquist Fan

Whereas the south-eastern part of the TESZ (Teisseyre-Tornquist Zone) is relatively well-confined, the north-western part divides into numerous sutures and faults, which fan out towards the North Sea and the Iapetus Suture which runs between the Scandinavian and Scottish Caledonides. It includes the following linear features (sorted from the north-east): * The Fennoscandian Border Zone (FBZ) in Skagen and Kattegat * The Sorgenfrei-Tornquist Zone (STZ), including many parallel horsts in Scania (e.g.

Linderödsåsen The Linderödsåsen is a ridge, geologically a '' horst,'' in the province of Skåne in southernmost Sweden. It lies at the edge of the Baltic shield, in the Tornquist Zone, and continues with the Hallandsås in north western direction towards t ...

and Söderåsen). This zone experienced

extension Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that satisfy the predicate * E ...

in the Jurassic. In association to this event numerous monogenetic volcanoes sprang up in Central Scania. * Ringkøbing-Fyn High (RFH) * Caledonian Deformation Front (CDF) * Trans-European Fault (TEF) The Moho under the Tornquist Fan has a strong topography with depths varying between 26 and 48 km. It started forming during the Caledonian orogeny as a microcontinent or a series of terranes of

n origin amalgamated with Baltica. Faults are believed to have continued forming until late Paleozoic.

Teisseyre-Tornquist Zone

The Teisseyre-Tornquist Zone (TTZ), extending from Pomerania at the Baltic Sea to the Dobruja at the Black Sea, is primarily known from geophysical studies. Seismic data and gravity models suggest a strong contrast in crustal thickness, with 28–35 km down to the Moho to the west of the suture and 42–47 km to the east of it. The suture is believed to be buried under thick upper Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments, and located further west than indicated by historical surface observations. M. Narkiewicz et al., Transcurrent nature of the Teisseyre–Tornquist Zone in Central Europe: results of the POLCRUST-01 deep reflection seismic profile, International Journal of Earth Sciences, April 2015, Volume 104, Issue 3, pp 775-796, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00531-014-1116-4

References

{{Reflist Natural history of Europe Geology of Denmark Geology of Poland Geology of Sweden Geology of Ukraine Ordovician paleogeography Ordovician Sweden Paleozoic Denmark Paleozoic Poland Paleozoic Ukraine Suture zones

History of Discovery

Tornquist Fan

Teisseyre-Tornquist Zone

See also

References