Inversion tectonics in the Sorgenfrei–Tornquist Zone: insight from new marine seismic data at the Bornholm Gat, SW Baltic Sea

ABSTRACT New seismic profiles located within the Bornholm Gat in the SW Baltic Sea area image Late Cretaceous-Paleogene inversion and exhumation of a previously poorly characterized narrow crustal zone in the southern end of the Sorgenfrei–Tornquist Zone (STZ), a long pre-Alpine tectonic lineament in Europe. Thrusts and pop-up structures developed along the inversion axis accompanied by subsidence troughs on its sides. Stratigraphic analysis of chalk deposits indicates that structural shortening and inversion resulted from compressional deformation. Marginal troughs formed synchronously to inversion and adjacent to the tectonically active slope, where sediment redeposition was focused. Deposition of chalk units, composed predominantly of contourites and gravity-driven sedimentation were largely controlled by inversion tectonics and influenced by intensification of bottom currents. We find that allochthonous chalk has been buried in horizontally deposited autochthonous (pelagic) chalk. An erosional unconformity represents the base of the Maastrichtian and marks the onset of along slope deposition due to a more hydrodynamic environment. The revealed asymmetric inversion across the STZ with fold tightening and superposition of NE-NW folds attest to more than one pulse during the Late Cretaceous-Cenozoic inversion. The STZ may belong to the end-member mode of intraplate foreland basins resulting from a far-field NE-SW compression transmitted from the Africa-Iberia-Europe convergence. The intraplate stress associated with the following Maastrichtian enhanced collisional coupling between the Alpine-Carpathian orogen and its foreland, which is widely recognized (e.g., the Mid-Polish Trough, the Bohemian Massif and the Central Graben), may also have had its maximum extent to the northeast in southern Sweden.