Tektoniczne znaczenie strefy Teisseyre’a-Tornquista w świetle nowych badań

The Teisseyre-Tornquist Zone (TTZ), a transcontinental feature evident from magnetic and gravity maps, runs obliquely across the territory of Poland from the NW to SE and for a century it has been considered a deep tectonic boundary between the Pre- cambrian East European Platform (EEP) in the NE and the so-called young Palaeozoic Platform in the SW. The results of quantitative interpretation of gravity and magnetic data, integrated with data from new reflection seismic profiles crossing the TTZ, indicate the continuation of the Precambrian basement of the EEP and its lower Palaeozoic cover toward the SW underneath the Palaeozoic Platform of southwestern Poland. They also suggest the occurrence of a crustal keel beneath the TTZ. In the broader context ofEuropean geology, these results imply the location of a hypothetical Caledonian tectonic suture, marking the site of the collision between Avalonia and Baltica, not along the TTZ, but farther SW, in northern Germany and southwest Poland. Another implication is that the extensive Permian-Mesozoic sedimentary basins of western Poland are established above the attenuated margin of the Baltica palaeocontinent.