Facies and tectonic setting of the Upper Carboniferous rocks of Northwestern Turkey

Abstract

Summary In various outcrops along the Black Sea coast, a thick Dinantian shallow water carbonate succession is overlain by four formations of highest Visean to highest Westphalian age. The succession changes upwards from generally shallow marine, to non-marine giving way in the upper levels of flood-plain, lacustrine and fluviatile deposits. All the present outcrops are believed to have belonged to a single large basin in which material was derived from a former Black Sea continent to the north. In contrast to some recent suggestions, the basin was located near the southern edge of the Laurasian plate. A model is discussed in which uplift of the area north of the modern North Anatolian Fault is attributed to dextral strike-slip faulting in approximately E-W and NNE-SSW directions. Although evidence of strike-slip faulting has been obscured by later tectonic events, in general the North Turkish Upper Carboniferous sedimentary rocks were deformed during a late Hercynian phase of large-scale wrench-faulting caused by oblique collision of the Gondwana and Laurasian plates after Carboniferous time, which may have also displayed the former Black Sea continent eastwards.