Abstract: Palinspastic reconstruction of the Carpathian/Pannonian system

TARI, GABOR, FRANK HORVATH, and LASZLO CSONTOS,

The palinspastic reconstruction of the Alpine thrust-foldbelts of Central-Eastern Europe, including their subsurface continuation underneath the Pannonian basin, is a much debated problem. Using a new approach to this problem, in our study a series of palinspastic maps was constructed beginning with the present-day situation and going backwards until the Early Miocene.

During the Tertiary two fundamentally important tectonic processes took place: the Middle Miocene synrift extension in the Pannonian Basin and, immediately before that, the Early Miocene continental escape of the Northern Pannonian unit. These events are primarily responsible for the present-day collage of scattered Paleogene basin fragments and the peculiar shape of the Mesozoic Vardar-Transylvania ophiolite belt. The reconstruction was attempted in several steps by moving large-scale tectonic blocks. The analysis includes considerations of the map-view area balance and the sometimes severe internal deformation of certain tectonic units, such deformation being revealed by the cross-sectional geometry of these blocks. Thus, the recently recognized extreme crustal extension in certain regions of the Pannonian basin has a significant impact on the reconstruction of the pre-extensional geometry of the Carpathian arc.

Additional constraints were provided by paleomagnetic declination anomalies in the Carpathian/Pannonian region. Their interpretation, however, is not straightforward because some of the observed declination anomalies are partly due to local block rotations rather than regional-scale rotations.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90942©1997 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Vienna, Austria