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 anim ...

orogens of South-Western Europe. The zone runs from the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian ...

to the

Black Sea The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...

. 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 West ...

and

Baltica Baltica is a paleocontinent that formed in the Paleoproterozoic and now constitutes northwestern Eurasia, or Europe north of the Trans-European Suture Zone and west of the Ural Mountains. The thick core of Baltica, the East European Craton, ...

/ 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 Alpine may refer to any mountainous region. It may also refer to: Places Europe * Alps, a European mountain range ** Alpine states, which overlap with the European range Australia * Alpine, New South Wales, a Northern Village * Alpine National P ...

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 Scania, also known by its native name of Skåne (, ), is the southernmost of the historical provinces (''landskap'') of Sweden. Located in the south tip of the geographical region of Götaland, the province is roughly conterminous with Skån ...

(Sweden),

Kattegat The Kattegat (; sv, Kattegatt ) is a sea area bounded by the Jutlandic peninsula in the west, the Danish Straits islands of Denmark and the Baltic Sea to the south and the provinces of Bohuslän, Västergötland, Halland and Skåne in Sweden ...

, 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 stretche ...

. 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 Alexander Tornquist (18 June 1868 in Hamburg – 1 November 1944, Graz) was a German-Austrian geologist, who is known for his work on the northern part of the Trans European Suture Zone and on Mediterranean geology. Biography Alexander Tornqu ...

mapped the continuation of the zone from Poland to

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

and the

Iapetus Suture The Iapetus Suture is one of several major Fault (geology), geological faults caused by the collision of several ancient land masses forming a suture (geology), suture. It represents in part the remains of what was once the Iapetus Ocean. Iapet ...

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 Skagen () is Denmark's northernmost town, on the east coast of the Skagen Odde peninsula in the far north of Jutland, part of Frederikshavn Municipality in Nordjylland, north of Frederikshavn and northeast of Aalborg. The Port of Skage ...

and

* The Sorgenfrei-Tornquist Zone (STZ), including many parallel horsts in

(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 Söderåsen is a northwest–southwest elongated bedrock ridge in Scania in southern Sweden. On Söderåsen is Scania's highest point at above sea level. It is intersected by several fissure valleys. The ridge extends from Röstånga in the ...

). 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 * Ext ...

in the Jurassic. In association to this event numerous

monogenetic volcano A monogenetic volcanic field is a type of volcanic field consisting of a group of small monogenetic volcanoes, each of which erupts only once, as opposed to polygenetic volcanoes, which erupt repeatedly over a period of time. The small monogeneti ...

es 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 The Caledonian orogeny was a mountain-building era recorded in the northern parts of the British Isles, the Scandinavian Mountains, Svalbard, eastern Greenland and parts of north-central Europe. The Caledonian orogeny encompasses events that ...

as a microcontinent or a series of

terrane In geology, a terrane (; in full, a tectonostratigraphic terrane) is a crust fragment formed on a tectonic plate (or broken off from it) and accreted or " sutured" to crust lying on another plate. The crustal block or fragment preserves its ow ...

s of

n origin amalgamated with

. Faults are believed to have continued forming until late

Paleozoic The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ...

Teisseyre-Tornquist Zone

The Teisseyre-Tornquist Zone (TTZ), extending from

Pomerania Pomerania ( pl, Pomorze; german: Pommern; Kashubian: ''Pòmòrskô''; sv, Pommern) is a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. The western part of Pomerania belongs to ...

at the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from ...

to the

Dobruja Dobruja or Dobrudja (; bg, Добруджа, Dobrudzha or ''Dobrudža''; ro, Dobrogea, or ; tr, Dobruca) is a historical region in the Balkans that has been divided since the 19th century between the territories of Bulgaria and Romania. I ...

at the

, 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

and

Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretace ...

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